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PDFStop-and-Frisk Practice Violated Rights, Judge Rules, New York Times
In a repudiation of a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy, a federal judge has found that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in New York, and called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms.
In a blistering decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, found that the Police Department had “adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling” that targeted young minority men for stops….
in her ruling, Judge Scheindlin found that in doing so, the police systematically stopped innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing…
But the stops were not the end of the problem, Judge Scheindlin found. Officers often frisked these people, overwhelmingly young black and Hispanic men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, according to the decision. Those encounters typically ended with the police letting the person go for lack of evidence of criminality.
Blacks and Hispanics were stopped about 88 percent of the time, a disparity that the Police Department has sought to explain by saying that it mirrored the disproportionate percentage of crimes committed by young minority men. In severe language, Judge Scheindlin dismissed the Police Department’s rationale.
“This might be a valid comparison if the people stopped were criminals,” Judge Scheindlin wrote, explaining that there was significant evidence that the people being stopped were not criminals. “To the contrary, nearly 90 percent of the people stopped are released without the officer finding any basis for a summons or arrest.”
Rather, Judge Scheindlin found, the city had a “policy of targeting expressly identified racial groups for stops in general.”
Order on Liability
Order on Remedy
http://ccrjustice.org/files/Floyd-Remedy-Opinion-8-12-13.pdf
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