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Report: NYPD Failing to Comply with Stop and Frisk Reforms

The Independent Federal Monitor of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) released a report finding that the NYPD has failed to comply with court-ordered mandates to reform its stop, question, and frisk and trespass enforcement practices.

The Monitor’s latest report identifies several ways the NYPD is not complying with the court-ordered reforms, noting that unconstitutional stops, frisks, and searches all increased 2022.

Specialized units, such as the Neighborhood Safety Teams (NST) which have drawn significant criticism for policing practices that harm Black and Latino New Yorkers, were found by the Monitor to engage in the majority of these unlawful stops.

In 2013, a federal court appointed an independent monitor to oversee reforms ordered in Floyd v. City of New York. The Legal Defense Fund and The Legal Aid Society represent the plaintiffs in a related federal class action lawsuit, Davis v. City of New York, which challenged the NYPD’s racially discriminatory and unconstitutional stop-and-frisk and trespass enforcement practices of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents and their guests. The settlement reached in the Davis case has been incorporated by court order into the monitorship ordered in the Floyd case.

“The NYPD’s years-long failure to end the unconstitutional stops, frisks, and searches used to harass and abuse Black and brown New Yorkers is an absolute disgrace,” said Jennvine Wong, Supervising Attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project.

“The fact that the Department has done so little over the course of a decade to effect court-ordered reforms is inexcusable, and shows an utter lack of concern for the rights, dignity, and humanity of people of color,” she continued. “NYPD leadership must commit to ending its racist and unconstitutional stop-and-frisk practices immediately, and must hold NYPD members at all levels accountable to this goal.”

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