NEW YORK — Activists opposed to the stop and frisk policing practice filed a court motion on Oct. 7 against the city’s request to stay on a landmark federal ruling that would reform the practice.
United States District Judge Shira Scheindlin refused the Bloomberg Administration’s request for a stay of the federal court’s stop-and-frisk decision.
About three weeks ago, Scheindlin declared the NYPD’s practice of stop and frisk unconstitutional and put a federal monitor in place to oversee all stops. The judge also asked that the NYPD revisit the policy and come up with a new version that utilizes community policing. In addition, 5 percent of officers must wear body cameras so that the policy can be better policed.
Citing parallel declines in stop-and-frisk encounters and crime rates, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin on Sept. 17 rebuffed the Bloomberg administration’s request that she delay remedies she ordered to the NYPD program while her ruling is being appealed.
In a move to distance itself from the Mayor Michael Bloomberg on stop-and-frisk and policing issues, the New York City Council overrode two mayoral vetoes on police oversight.
Screenings of Fruitvale Station and the recent controversy over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices are stirring up new conversations about policing, crime, and violence among white people who are not targeted by policing.
On Monday, federal judge Schira Scheindlin ruled that New York City’s controversial stop and frisk policing policing policy was unconstitutional and amounts to "indirect racial profiling" because officers regularly stop "blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white."
As the Police Department performed a mounting number of stops on New York streets, voices of opposition, slow and scattershot, struggled to be heard.
Complaints, mostly from minority areas, never quite coalesced into a movement. Police officials and city leaders casually dismissed opponents, denying that the stops were race-based and pointing to the plummeting crime rate as justification for the tactics.
The Police Department's use of stop and frisk is an unconstitutional violation of the rights of minorities, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Monday.
The police are indirectly racially profiling by stopping minorities at a much higher rate than whites, Judge Shira Scheindlin said, according to multiple published reports.
Scheindlin has for months been hearing a case brought by several people who contend they were wrongly stopped.
Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday vetoed two measures meant to curb the city's controversial stop-and-frisk policing policy, setting up a likely showdown with the City Council.
Bloomberg called the bills dangerous and irresponsible and said they would make the city less safe.
One measure would create an independent inspector general to monitor the New York City Police Department. The other would expand the definition of racial profiling and allow people who believe they have been profiled to sue police in state court.
