This afternoon, hours after a federal court ruled that the New York Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” tactic was unconstitutional, New York City Mayor Bloomberg said the city doesn’t believe it got a “fair trial” and it will request an appeal to the ruling. “If this decision were to stand, it would make this city and the whole country more dangerous,” Bloomberg said.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin called the stop-and-frisk tactic “indirect racial profiling,” and argued that it violated Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life,” Scheindlin wrote.
In 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by the police under “stop-and-frisk” 532,911 times. Of those stopped, only 10% were white; 55% were black; and 32% were Latino. Since 2002, nearly 9 in 10 of those stopped-and-frisked were innocent. All this, despite the fact that New York City has experienced the lowest level of violent crime in 50 years.
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