Community Corner

At Trial's Conclusion, Judge Criticizes Effectiveness of Stop-and-Frisk

Judge Shira Scheindlin criticized the effectiveness of the practice as a deterrent of criminal behavior

Following two months of testimony in a federal trial exploring the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk, Judge Shira Scheindlin in her closing statement criticized the effectiveness of the practice in deterring criminal behavior, The New York Times writes.    

The case, Floyd v. City of New York, is a class-action lawsuit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights and other civil rights lawyers, claiming that the New York City Police Department had long been stopping and frisking black and Hispanic New Yorkers without evidence of criminality.  

Attorneys on both sides picked over the accounts of whistle-blowing officers, recordings of supervisors pressuring officers to conduct more stops and issue more summonses and the day-to-day testimonies of officers and their crime-fighting efforts.  

In the end, the judge, who is hearing the case without a jury, observed that only about 12 percent of police stops resulted in an arrest or summons and characterized it as “a high error rate.”  

“A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a gun and nobody has a gun,” Judge Scheindlin said. “You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time… That is a lot of misjudgment of suspicion.”     

Judge Scheindlin will decide on the case within a few months.


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