Court Compels NYPD to Release 10 Years of Stop and Frisk Data to CCR for Racial Profiling Class Action

This week, the United States District Court in Manhattan ordered the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to provide the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
with all stop-and-frisk data from 1998 through the present. The data
will no longer be covered by a protective order as it was in an earlier
suit, which means that CCR will be able to make it public along with an
analysis.

Judge Shira Scheinlin ruled that all the data (known as form UF-250 data) is relevant to CCR's racial profiling case Floyd v. New York and that the NYPD has failed to prove that law enforcement privilege protects any portion of the data.

"This decision is a major victory in the fight for transparency and accountability from the NYPD," said CCR attorney Darius Charney.
"The police department can't stop and frisk over 500,000 people in the
streets in the past year alone and then hide the data from the people
of New York. We applaud the court's decision in recognizing the
public's right to make sure our police department doesn't enforce and
condone illegal racial profiling policies."

On January 31, 2008, CCR filed a class action stop-and-frisk lawsuit
charging the NYPD with engaging in racial profiling and suspicion-less
stop-and-frisks of law-abiding New York City residents. In April, CCR
served discovery requests on the City, seeking production of the NYPD's
stop and frisk data going back to 1998. According to CCR attorneys,
the named plaintiffs in the case - David Floyd, Lalit Clarkson, and
Deion Dennis - represent the thousands of New Yorkers who have been
stopped on the way to work, in front of their homes, or just walking
down the street without any cause, primarily because they were men of
color.

The Floyd case stems from CCR's landmark racial profiling case, Daniels v. City of New York
- filed in the wake of the Amadou Diallo shooting - that led to the
disbanding of the infamous Street Crime Unit and a settlement with the
City in 2003. The Daniels settlement agreement required the NYPD to
maintain a written racial profiling policy that complies with the
United States and New York State Constitutions and to provide
stop-and-frisk data to CCR on a quarterly basis from the last quarter
of 2003 through the first quarter of 2007. An analysis of the data
revealed that the NYPD continued to engage in stop-and-frisks without
suspicion and based on race. That analysis and all the data it was
based on were under a protective order that did not allow it to be
released to the public.

CCR will release a detailed report on the stop-and-frisks that is
critical of the City's continued racial profiling policy when the NYPD
hands over the data, as ordered by the judge.

For more information on Floyd v. City of New York, click here.

Attached Files

• JudgeScheindlin_Order_Re_UF-250_Data_9.10.2008.pdf