- New York 08/12/2013 by Linda Perry Barr (WBAI)

Today, Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled in Floyd vs. the City of New York that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy violated the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. The judge said Stop and Frisk is unconstitutional and discriminatory and she appointed an independent monitor. The judge said, "The city and its highest officials believe that blacks and Hispanics should be stopped at the same rate as their proportion of the local criminal suspect population. But this reasoning is flawed because the stopped population is overwhelmingly innocent - not criminal." The independent monitor will oversee NYPD policies, training, supervision, monitoring and discipline. Citing Fourth Amendment violations against unreasonable search and seizure Scheindlin said, "Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often. The NYPD's practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD's standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods."