A major civil trial challenging the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy begins today in Federal court in Manhattan. The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed the lawsuit on behalf of four men who say they were stopped by the police because of racial profiling. According to the Associated Press, "the courtroom and overflow rooms were packed" today, and at a rally outside the courthouse, Rev. Jesse Jackson said, “I heard rationalization and justification rather than explanation from the city. They were not denying. They were justifying.”
The plaintiffs are not asking for the judge to make stop-and-frisk illegal (other courts have already deemed it legal) but they are demanding reform. The AP notes that U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin has said she "is deeply concerned about stop and frisk." Darius Charney, an attorney for the plaintiffs, describes the stop-and-frisk as a “frightening and degrading experience” for “thousands if not millions” of New Yorkers that is “arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional."
Last week, the NYPD reached an inauspicious milestone when the five millionth person was stopped, questioned and/or frisked by the department during the Bloomberg administration. The trial, which is expected to last a month, will feature testimony from a dozen black and Hispanic men who say they were targeted because of their race, police whistleblowers, as well as audio tapes made by former cop Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his higher-ups at the NYPD telling him and others to meet arrest quotas.
531,000 people were stopped as part of the program last year, more than five times the number when Bloomberg took office. Fifty-one percent of those stopped were black, 32 percent Hispanic and 11 percent white. The NYPD claims that the street stops are a deterrent that lowers crime and saves lives. But last year a drop in homicides corresponded with a decrease in the number of stop-and-frisks reported by the NYPD.
