| NEW YORK - September 18 - Late today, the NYPD agreed to settle a federal class action lawsuit - Kelvin Daniels v. City of New York – which alleged that the Police Department habitually implemented racial profiling practices in stop and frisk situations. The settlement requires that the NYPD report every instance of stop and frisk to lawyers for the plaintiffs at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the law firms of Moore and Goodman and Debevoise and Plimpton so that they can be monitored as part of a four-year agreement.
The case was originally filed in 1999, weeks after the killing of Amadou Diallo, at a time when the Street Crimes Unit was patrolling poor minority neighborhoods of New York and stopping and frisking young Black and Latino men on a regular basis. Subsequently the SCU was disbanded and today’s agreement binds over 36,000 officers of the NYPD.
“This is a very significant settlement for the people of New York,” said CCR Legal Director Jeffrey Fogel. “For the first time in history there will be a court order that prohibits all officers in the NYPD from engaging in racial profiling.”
“This settlement requires the City of New York to maintain a written racial profiling policy that complies with the constitution of the United States,” said Jonathan Moore, an attorney with Moore and Goodman and a cooperating attorney with CCR. “It also mandates that the NYPD audit the officers and supervisors of the NYPD who engage in stop and frisks to determine whether and to what extent stop and frisks are based on reasonable suspicion and whether and to what extent stops and frisks are being documented.” The agreement provides that the results of these audits must be supplied to counsel for the plaintiffs.
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