10 years ago, she ruled the NYPD was wrong on stop-and-frisk. Now she worries it's coming back.

Saturday, August 12 marks 10 years since the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy was ruled unconstitutional. The practice was a hallmark of policing in New York during Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s administration and hit its apex under former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly.

But in an Aug. 12, 2013, opinion, District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that stop and frisk, as applied by the city, was “racially discriminatory” and unlawfully singled out Black and Hispanic men.

Now Scheindlin, retired from the bench and currently with the law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, worries the police tactic is making a comeback.

She joined "All Things Considered" host Tiffany Hanssen to discuss her landmark ruling. Their conversation was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Hanssen: I just want to remind listeners exactly what was happening 10 years ago. Before we talk about the ruling, just paint a picture of what was happening at the time in terms of stop and frisk in the NYPD.

SCHEINDLIN: Yes, at that time, there were hundreds of thousands of stops per year. I believe the highest year was about 660,000 stops in one year. The police department would stop people without what I believe is reasonable suspicion to do so, and not only would they stop them, but they would often frisk them. What happened was these stops were essentially drilling in a dry well.

The stops did not produce drugs, did not produce guns, did not produce evidence of crimes. It was just an intrusion into people's freedom to walk about without being harassed by police. Most of these stops resulted in nothing – 88%, I believe, was the figure. The remainder had some follow-up, often for very minor offenses. Maybe somebody who was stopped had a warrant or hadn't paid some fines or whatever.

So it was not a very effective policy. In any event, a class action lawsuit was brought. It took years to get it tried, and there was a trial before me and then there was a decision. It was a non-jury trial, so I was the only finder of the facts.

What about the policy did you find unconstitutional?

The majority of the stops were disproportionately against Black and Hispanic people. The evidence at trial showed that they were stopped (significantly) out of proportion to their percentage in the population in New York.

This led to the conclusion that there was a lot of racial profiling going on. The police targeted certain neighborhoods, targeted certain members of our society disproportionately, so the burden fell on Black and Hispanic people. There was testimony at the trial that police were told essentially, we need to stop the right people in the right places at the right time.

There was testimony at the trial that very high up people in the police department said, "We all know who's committing the crimes in New York – it's young Black males." The perception in the police department was that these people are always armed and always ready to commit crimes, and if we do these stops, they won't commit crimes.

You talk about the evidence you heard at trial. I want to know if there was anything you heard in favor of stop and frisk that made you question your ruling at all?

No, actually not. The morning after the ruling, the mayor and the police commissioner and the city's corporation council said, "Oh, now the city's gonna blow up with crime." And, of course, I'm a human being, and I was worried about that. But, in reality, the exact opposite happened. The stops plummeted from 600,000 to 10,000, and crime did not go up.

So what does that tell us? It tells us that all those stops were essentially useless. And they were not what made crime go up or down. It just didn't have the impact it was supposed to have, except to alienate a lot of New Yorkers and a lot of communities who didn't trust police and wouldn't cooperate with police, and they need police.

We know that crime didn't go up. We know that the number of stops plummeted after the ruling. Racial disparities, however, persist even today. We know that the number of people stopped are overwhelmingly Black and Latino even today. What does that tell you about the state of policing and the aftermath of this ruling?

Right. I understand your question and it's a very important one. I issued two opinions 10 years ago. One was called the liability opinion. The other one was called the remedial opinion. The liability opinion found that the city was liable for this unconstitutional practice, and it had to stop, meaning you can still make stops, but you have to have a reasonable suspicion to stop somebody. That's what the law is.

And the remedial opinion set up a monitorship and, and a monitor was appointed. A monitor worked for years with the police department to institute reforms that I set forth in the remedial opinion. So there was far more training. They also had to document the stop in a better way, write up the reason; they had to tell the person stopped, "Here's why you were stopped, here's a form, here's the name of the stopping officer."

Oh, and the biggest one, of course, forgive me, was requiring body-worn cameras for some police officers. That was the first really wide use by a big urban center of body cameras, which we accept today all over the United States. But, all that said, I don't know that it was as effective as I would like. It was slow. It's taken years.

The monitorship is still in effect. The current monitor wrote a report to the court saying she was troubled. She felt that not enough progress has been made. She's still getting some resistance from the police department and the changes that need to be made. There's still a disproportionate stopping of black and Hispanic people and now we're seeing a rise in stops again and it's racially disproportionate.

One of the people who testified at the trial was Eric Adams. He is now a retired NYPD captain and, of course, our mayor. At the time, he testified against stop and frisk when he was a state senator. Since he took office, stops have started to climb again, largely because of his tough-on-crime strategies. So I'm just wondering what you make of this? Some could call it a reversal on this issue.

Well, I do remember his testimony. Well, it was a dramatic day. It was courageous to come in and take a position that was favorable to the plaintiffs and not favorable to New York City (government) and the police department. He said he did not think stop and frisk was effective, and he opposed it. OK, but at that time, he wasn't even the borough president. I mean, he was just a former police officer.

Then you become a public person, you're the borough president, and then you're elected mayor, and now you're responsible for an entire city. And yes, crime was going up during COVID around the country and a lot of mayors around the country were troubled, many of them people of color themselves. But they had to take a tough view of crime and law and order. They want a safe city. But, that said, he knows better.

He knows recreating these special units that have always done these stop-and-frisk stops has only led to trouble. But, at the end of the day, I still don't think it's an effective policy. I think it makes for a distrust between the community and the police, and I think he's making a mistake to think suddenly that the policy that has been discredited is suddenly going to help the city of New York and the citizens of New York, so I'm disappointed in that.