Despite the constant crowing from the NYPD and city officials that the police department's stop-and-frisk policy is a necessary nuisance for New Yorkers (mostly those who are black and brown!), a federal judge today granted class-action status in a lawsuit against the NYPD that claims the practice violates the constitutional rights of blacks and Hispanics.
The Times obtained Judge Shira Scheindlin's opinion, which stated that the evidence presented showed that the central tenets that make up the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy led to many illegal stops. Judge Scheindlin writes:
It is rather audacious of the NYPD to argue that if it were possible to protect "the right of people to be secure in their persons" from unlawful searches and seizures by the NYPD, then the legislature would already have done so and judicial intervention would therefore be futile. Indeed, it is precisely when the political branches violate the individual rights of minorities that "more searching judicial enquiry" is appropriate.
(Emphasis is Judge Scheindlin's.) The NYPD is on track to break last year's record of 601,055 stops (that's 1,900 a day) in 2012.
