Stop And Frisk

The Federal Appeals Court in new york on Friday has declined tossing out court rulings that new york City carried out its police stop-and-frisk policy in a discriminatory manner. Judge Scheindlin ruled in August that the Police Department not only had violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, but had also violated the 14th Amendment by resorting to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as the number of police stops soared in minority communities over the last decade. Judge Scheindlin found that the police routinely stopped “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”

Lawyers for the city had gone to the Second Circuit to ask for a stay of Judge Scheindlin's ruling and of the court-ordered mandates. In granting the stay, the circuit went beyond what the city had requested and unexpectedly ordered that the stop-and-frisk lawsuit, known as the Floyd case, be randomly reassigned.

The newly elected major Bill De Blasio stated that he would order the city to drop its appeal.The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents plaintiffs in the stop-and-frisk case, said in a statement that it hopes Mr. De Blasio would act on his order.