NYPD makes minor changes to it's "Stop & Frisk" program.

A day after a federal judge issued a ruling fiercely criticizing the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly unveiled new measures on Thursday intended to reduce the frequency of illegitimate stops.

The measures, which were outlined in a three-page letter sent to the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, include a re-emphasis on an existing departmental order banning racial profiling. The order is to be incorporated in routine training sessions for officers beginning next month.

Another calls for greater scrutiny of the work sheets known as UF250s that officers fill out after each street stop. Now, Mr. Kelly said, the executive officer at each of the city’s 76 precincts will be in charge of auditing the forms. He also said the department was moving to develop a “quantitative mechanism” to pinpoint those officers who were the object of complaints from civilians over street stops.

“I believe these measures will help us more closely monitor the daily street encounter activity of precinct personnel,” Mr. Kelly said in the letter.

Critics of the Police Department, however, said that if the intent of the changes was to resolve issues raised by a lawsuit against the department, which Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court elevated to class-action status on Wednesday, they fell short. Mr. Kelly’s letter included no substantive policy change, said Eugene J. O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“It is being depicted as ‘a misunderstanding by the troops in the field, or nefarious conduct by the troops in the field,’ and not as, ‘We at One Police Plaza are searching our conscience and trying to find ways to make policy changes,’ ” Professor O’Donnell said. “It skirts all of the issues that were raised by the judge.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/nyregion/commissioner-announces-steps-on-improper-stop-and-frisk-but-critics-are-unmoved.html?_r=1

NYPD Letter: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/17/nyregion/17stopandfrisk.html