Federal Judge's decision: The NYPD's "Stop & Frisk" policy is unconstitutional.

 Last week, a federal judge in New York dealt a blow to “stop-and-frisk,” a policy that resulted in 685,000 recorded police stops in 2011. Eighty-five percent of those stopped were African American and Latino, mostly youths.

US district judge Shira Scheindlin granted class-action certification to a stop-and-frisk lawsuit against the city of New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The plaintiffs allege that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy regularly violates the Constitution by illegally stopping and searching scores of people belonging to a particular demographic -- black and Latino. Pending the city's appeal, the class-action ruling will put stop-and-frisk on trial.

Plaintiffs in Floyd et al. vs City of New York also argue that they were stopped by police who did not have the legally necessary "reasonable suspicion" that they had committed or were going to commit a crime. What's more, the suit alleges, police often performed frisks, but not because they saw a bulge they suspected to be a weapon, another legal requirement.

In her written decision, Scheindlin said the alleged constitutional violations result not from the actions of rogue officers, but from a policy handed down from the very top. "The stop-and-frisk program is centralized and hierarchical," said Scheindlin, "Those stops were made pursuant to a policy that is designed, implemented and monitored by the NYPD's administration."

Scheindlin's ruling cites "overwhelming evidence" -- a spike in stop-and-frisks and the NYPD's own words -- indicating that at the "highest levels of the department," police are enforcing a policy that leaves behind a trail of daily injustices.

For years, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly have used distortions and misinformation to promote and justify a policy that violates the constitutional rights of those who were stopped. Now, the Scheindlin findings have exposed the NYPD game for what it is, an illegal system of quotas and racial profiling imposed on field police from the top of the NYPD.

"Suspicionless stops should never occur," Scheindlin wrote in her decision, adding that, "Defendants' cavalier attitude towards the prospect of a'"widespread practice of suspicionless stops' displays a deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights." Stop-and-frisk, which the data shows is a form of racial profiling, violates not only the Fourth Amendment -- protection from unreasonable searches -- but also the 14th Amendment, which includes the equal protection clause, the plaintiffs charge.
http://www.alternet.org/story/155609/courts_expose_stop-and-frisk_as_racist%2C_unconstitutional_nypd_harassment_strategy%3A_8_important_facets_of_the_legal_decision/