Judge OKs class action vs. ‘stop-frisk’
By BRUCE GOLDING
Last Updated: 7:30 AM, May 17, 2012
Posted: 2:16 AM, May 17, 2012
A judge took a shot at one of the NYPD’s key crimefighting tools yesterday by greenlighting a classaction suit over the controversial “stopandfrisk” program, which officials say has reduced murders and pulled illegal guns off the streets.
Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said there’s “overwhelming evidence” the program—whichMayor Bloomberghas credited with helping save 5,000plus lives —was part of a “centralized” effort “that has led to thousands of unlawful stops.”
“The vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never bring suit to vindicate their rights,” Scheindlin wrote. “It is precisely for cases such as this that [the classaction law] was designed.”
City officials have described stopandfrisk as an invaluable weapon in the war on crime, and the NYPD last week released stats showing a huge decrease in murders and an increase in weapons seizures as cops stepped up the programthis year.
Scheindlin’s ruling covers anyone who’s been stopped since Jan. 31, 2005, “in the absenceof a reasonable, articulable suspicion that criminal activityhas taken, is taking or is about to takeplace.”
Four black men are currently the named plaintiffs in the 2008 suit, but Scheindlin estimated that “well over” 100,000 people would be eligible to join in.
The suit charges that cops focus stopandfrisk efforts on minority neighborhoods, and it seeks unspecified damages and a court order barring “suspicionless stops and frisks” and “racial and/ or national origin profiling.”
Scheindlin also slammed the city for opposing classaction certification on grounds that curtailing the program would be “exactly the kind of judicial intrusion which is disfavored.”
Insisting that “suspicionless stops should never occur,” Scheindlin said the city’s “cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a ‘widespread practice of suspicionless stops’ displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers’ most fundamental constitutional rights.”
She also rejected the NYPD’s “audacious” argument that lawmakerswould have already banned the practice if they wanted to, noting that 27 members of the City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus had filed a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.
“Indeed, it is precisely when the political branches violate the individual rights of minorities that ‘more searching judicial enquiry’ is appropriate,” Scheindlin wrote.
In addition, she said that “if theNYPDis engaging in a widespread practice of unlawful stops,” judicial intervention would be “a vindication of the Constitution and an exercise of the courts’ most important function: protecting individual rights in the face of the government’smalfeasance.”
The NYPD declined to comment, but at his daily news briefing, Mayor Bloomberg vigorously defended the stopandfrisk program, saying: “I think as of today — we’re 135 days into the year—Ithink we’ve had 135 murders. If it were to stay at this rate, you would have 50 percent less than when we came intooffice.”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn—currently leading the polls to succeed Bloomberg — said she was “extremely gratified” by Scheindlin’s ruling, calling it “an important step towards systemic reform of this practice.”
Additional reporting by David Seifman