Recently, OK WASSUP! reported on New York City’s controversial “Stop-and-Frisk” policy, which allows police to detain and search anyone for any reason. Now, a judge has ruled the policy unconstitutional.
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According to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly, stop-and-frisk was created to deter crime in order to keep the city safe. However, the policy quickly turned into a witch-hunt aimed primarily at African-American and Latino men, who were stopped and frisked for no other reason than the color of their skin.
A lawsuit was brought against the NYPD by David Floyd, a medical student who was stopped twice, including once in the middle of the afternoon while he was in front of his own home. The trial ended last May and featured 9 weeks of testimony from minority men, who were each stopped for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Testimony also came from several police officers, who admitted they did not like the policy, but were forced to continue it under a quota system created by their superiors.
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Yesterday, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled stop-and-frisk as discriminatory based on race and therefore unconstitutional. She said the NYPD violated the law “through their deliberate indifference to unconstitutional stops, frisks and searches.”
In a lengthy ruling, the judge added “They have received both actual and constructive notice since at least 1999 of widespread Fourth Amendment violations occurring as a result of the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices. Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations.”
She also cited violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
“Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often,” she said. “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.”
Judge Scheindlin has appointed an outside monitor to oversee immediate changes to the policy.
