New York Police Facilitator Appointed in Stop-and-Frisk Case
Patricia HurtadoVera Institute of Justice President Nicholas Turner was appointed by a federal judge to help facilitate the New York Police Department’s compliance with a ruling last month that the department engages in racial profiling as part of its so-called stop-and-frisk strategy.
U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan ruled Aug. 12 that the city’s police department unlawfully targeted people on the basis of their race and violated their constitutional rights.
Turner, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, has initiated and managed projects on racial profiling in prosecutions, safety in U.S. prisons and sentencing reform, Scheindlin said today.
Turner will facilitate the reform process and his fees and staff will be paid by the city, she said.
The judge on Aug. 12 appointed Peter L. Zimroth, a New York University law professor and former corporation counsel for the city, to monitor changes in the police department. Zimroth is responsible for developing changes, informing the city of milestones it must achieve, conducting regular progress reviews and issuing public reports every six months with details on the department’s compliance.
Further Reforms
Zimroth will work with Turner to develop “any further reforms necessary” to ending the violations and will work with the parties to create “a more thorough set of reforms,” she said.
Turner will hold town hall meetings in each of the city’s five boroughs for the community to discuss police department issues and handle anonymous information from police officers and officials.
The Vera Institute “has a long history of working to improve public safety by strengthening the ties between police and the community,” Scheindlin said. “In the early 1980s, Vera partnered with the NYPD to develop the Community Patrol Officer Program, one of the first community policing programs in the country.”
The institute, based in New York, is “recognized for its use of rigorous testing and broad-based collaboration to help governments plan, implement, and evaluate improvements in the justice system,” the judge said.
Bail System
A founding project of the Vera Institute was to help reform the city’s bail system and that a 1999 study by the organization of two police precincts in the South Bronx examined approaches to “respectful and effective policing” in minority communities, Scheindlin said.
The city on Aug. 16 filed a notice it will appeal Scheindlin’s rulings. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday sued the city council to overturn a statute that allows lawsuits based on allegations a police officer used racial profiling to pick someone out for questioning. Two bills were passed by the City Council after Scheindlin issued her ruling.
Bloomberg said after the rulings Aug. 12 that the city benefited from the policy and that the judge “ignored the real-world realities of crime.”
The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
The case is Floyd v. City of New York, 08-cv-01034, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).