NEW YORK, May 21 (UPI) — The judge hearing the lawsuit filed against the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices indicated she doesn’t think the policy is effective.
However, effectiveness is not what U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin must determine in Floyd v. City of New York, a class-action lawsuit charging New York police stop and frisk African-Americans and Hispanics without evidence they were engaged in criminality, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
“A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a gun and nobody has a gun,” Judge Scheindlin said during closing arguments in the case. “So the point is: the suspicion turns out to be wrong in most of the cases.”
She asked lawyers representing the Center for Constitutional Rights and other civil rights organizations that filed the suit what evidence was required before she could conclude that an officer’s decision to stop someone was influenced by race.
Observers said that question is critical since there was no evidence presented that officers used racial slurs or overtly racial language when stopping any of the individual plaintiffs who testified in the suit.
Judge Scheindlin is expected to decide the case within a few months.
Copyright 2013 United Press International, Inc. (UPI).
