NYPD stop-and-frisk lawsuit now class action in victory for civil rights groups
A federal judge has granted class action status to a lawsuit that alleges the New York police department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy is unconstitutional and amounts to systemic racial discrimination.
Barring an effective appeal on behalf of the city, the decision paves the way for a trial that would require the department to defend before a jury its policy of stopping hundreds of thousands of minority New Yorkers each year. The decision comes less than a week after a report revealed the number of stop-and-frisks made by the NYPD of young African Americans in 2011 exceeded the number of New Yorkers who make up that racial group. Nearly nine out of 10 of the 685,724 citizens stopped by the police last year had committed no crime. In her latest 57-page decision, released Wednesday, Scheindlin described the city's attitude to the policy as "deeply troubling", noting there was "overwhelming evidence" that the policy has led to thousands of unlawful stops.