NYPD STOP-AND-FRISK RULED "UNCONSTITUTIONAL" BY MANHATTAN FEDERAL COURT JUDGE

NYPD STOP-AND-FRISK

A Manhattan federal court judge today ruled against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk practices, saying the city acted with “deliberate indifference” to these “unconstitutional” stops.
The NYPD has been systematically targeting minorities and violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection, according to US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin.

“I find that the City is liable for violating plaintiffs’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” Scheindlin wrote.

NYPD officers conduct a training exercise for stop-and-frisk.

 

“The City acted with deliberate indifference toward the NYPD’s practice of making unconstitutional stops and conducting unconstitutional frisks.”

The judge intends to install an independent monitor — private lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor Peter Zimroth — to monitor NYPD compliance with her ruling.
"Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often," Scheindlin wrote.

"The NYPD's practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD's standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods."
Scheindlin’s opinion followed a 10-week-long, class-action lawsuit trial that included testimony from innocent New Yorkers, who had been stopped, frisked and questioned by cops.

There were 4.4 million people stopped by cops in New York between 2004 and mid-2012, and 80 percent of them were black or Hispanic.

The judge found that "in each of these stops, a person's life was interrupted."
“Both statistical and anecdotal evidence showed that minorities are indeed treated differently than whites,” Scheindlin wrote.
“For example, once a stop is made, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband.”

City Hall and the NYPD have steadfastly defended stop-and-frisk practices, insisting that New Yorkers have been made safer by the policy.

Mayor Bloomberg went a step further earlier this summer, saying white New Yorkers are the ones who are being unfairly stopped, based on the percentage of crimes they commit.
“I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s exactly the reverse of what they say,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show in late June.

The ruling comes one month before the mayoral primary, which features a crowded Democratic field taking shots at the front-runner, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.