The NYPD can resume stop-and-frisk in Bronx only.

NY- Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin lifted the order Tuesday after she agreed with city lawyers who said the immediate halt of some “Clean Halls” trespass stops would impose an undue burden on the NYPD, requiring some form of “notification to and/or training of” thousands of NYPD officers and their supervisors.

She ordered an immediate halt to trespass stops outside Bronx “Clean Halls” buildings on Jan. 8 unless the officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that a violation has occurred.

The judge issued the stay at the request of the city, which had appealed her ruling to an appellate court.

Scheindlin said the stay would last until she decides what other relief she will grant as part of her ruling and in conjunction with another lawsuit Floyd v. City that is challenging stop-and-frisk tactics more broadly.

That case goes to trail March 18. Schiendlin on Tuesday rejected a new request by the city to postpone it.

In her latest ruling, Scheindlin said she recognized if a stay was granted “a certain number of unconstitutional stops are likely to take place that would not have taken place in the absence of a stay.”

“On the other hand, allowing a longstanding unconstitutional practice to persist for a few months while the parties present arguments regarding the appropriate scope of a remedy is quite distinct from allowing such a practice to persist until the completion of trial,” she said.

“Nothing in this decision changes or undermines the Court's finding that the NYPD has a practice of unconstitutional trespass stops,” said lawyer Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union which brought the lawsuit challenging the “Clean Halls” trespass stops. “All the court has done is to say it wants to consider all possible remedies at a single hearing this spring.”

City lawyer Heidi Grossman said, “We believe the court correctly lifted the immediate relief it had ordered.”

A judge is allowing the NYPD to resume certain stop-and-frisk tactics in the Bronx after ordering they be halted because they were unconstitutional.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin lifted the order Tuesday after she agreed with city lawyers. They had said the immediate halt of some “Clean Halls” trespass stops would impose an undue burden on the police, requiring some form of “notification to and/or training of” thousands of NYPD officers and their supervisors.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/federal-judge-lifts-nypd-stop-and-frisk-ban-bronx-article-1.1245600

Is the NYPD's Stop and Frisk program racist?

Stop and Frisk has been criticized for its targeting of minority communities. Seemingly every young black or Latino male resident of the city has his own story of being harassed by a police officer for reasons unknown or unjust. The wide net of Stop and Frisk has ensnared bankers and schoolteachers. On the other side, the program has also been praised for taking drug dealers and illegal guns off the street and dramatically lowering the city's murder rate. 

While its supporters and detractors are quick to offer evidence that, respectively, validates the program's success or damns its racism, at the heart of the controversy is an interpretation of the 4th Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches. What constitutes an unreasonable search? Some constitutional experts say it's an overreliance on race to determine suspicion. With a federal judge set to rule on New York's Stop and Frisk policy on March 18, these questions of constitutionality will determine the program's future.

Introduced by former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Stop and Frisk was a response to the city's crime rates in the 1980s and early 90s, when murder levels were among the highest in the country. The program's goal is to prevent crime before it occurs by stopping and sometimes searching persons suspected of being on the verge of committing a criminal act. Seizing illegal guns is a top program priority. By increasing the number of suspected criminals searched in high crime areas, Stop and Frisk aims to reduce violence by arresting those illegally carrying guns and deterring would-be criminals from carrying them in the first place.

Under current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the program has expanded significantly, stopping six times as many New Yorkers in 2011 as in 2001. Overwhelmingly most of those stopped have been black or Latino. For detractors of the program, the Nation recording confirmed their primary complaint: As practiced by the NYPD, Stop and Frisk can veer into racism, targeting innocent Latino and black men for no reason other than their skin color.

 A New York Civil Liberties Union analysis of police data found that in 2011, young black and Latino men accounted for almost half of all of the 685,724 stops reported by police. Together, young black and Latino men account for just 4.6 percent of the city's total population. Ninety percent of young black and Latino men stopped were found to be innocent.

Supporters of Stop and Frisk have responded to criticisms of these racial disparities by stating that the program operates most intensely in neighborhoods with high crime rates. According to these supporters, the higher prevalence of crime in black and Latino neighborhoods necessitates more police activity. The disproportionate number of stops of black and Latino males, they say, has less to do with their skin color than their location. 

This line of reasoning doesn't seem to line up with the NYPD's data. For instance, in Greenwich Village, which is overwhelmingly white, 70 percent of those stopped in 2011 were black or Latino. If Stop and Frisk were applied more evenly, one would expect white people to account for more than 30 percent of "suspicious" individuals in a predominately white neighborhood. 

Many New Yorkers believe the actions of the NYPD are outside what the ruling permits. "You can't use a Terry Stop to stop everyone," Bronx defense lawyer Christian Lassiter recently told me. Lassiter works with The Bronx Defenders, a non-profit organization that provides free legal defense to residents of The Bronx. "What the police will do is say, 'Let's stop this guy because he's had weed on him in the past.'"

According to Lassiter, not only does this type of policing go beyond what Terry permits, it also artificially inflates the crime rates of areas targeted by Stop and Frisk -- crime rates that the NYPD then uses to justify which areas they target in the first place. "It's a circular argument," Lassiter told me. "What's your criteria for a 'high crime area'? Is somewhere a high crime neighborhood because more people are being stopped illegally there? When you're controlling the numbers, like the NYPD is, you can show [a neighborhood is high crime]."
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/stop-and-frisk-may-be-working-but-is-it-racist/267417/