A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the city of New York can overhaul the police force’s use of the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic.
Second Circuit Court District Judge Analisa Torres rejected police union attempts to intervene in the case her 108-page decision calling them “untimely.” Motions to intervene were filed jointly by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York, Inc., the Detectives’ Endowment Association, Inc., the NYPD Captains Endowment Association, and the Lieutenants Benevolent Association of the City of New York, Inc.
Collectively named in the lawsuit as the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the unions had asked that police not be stopped from making suspected trespass stops outside of Bronx apartment buildings. They also asked the city not be held responsible for violating Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of city residents with the use of stop-and-frisk.
The unions had also appealed that the city not be compelled to use certain remedies, such as federal oversight, to settle the case. Judge Torres ruled they didn’t have enough “protectable interests” in the case to warrant their intervention. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association could not be reached for comment.
The city will also have a court-appointed monitor for three years instead of five. The monitor will only depart when the city can show “substantial compliance with its obligations by the end of that term,” according to Judge Torres’s decision.
Torres was assigned to the case, which the de Blasio administration had wanted to fast-track, after Judge Shira Scheindlin was removed amid questions of her impartiality. Scheindlin ruled last August that the department’s use of stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional.
Former mayor Michael Bloomberg filed the appeal to the case just before he left office, though it was widely believed at the time if elected, de Blasio would reverse the appeal.
