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Thursday, March 28, 2024

NYPD Agrees to Limit Stop and Frisks in Residential Buildings

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Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union called the NYPD practice of “stop and frisk” an aggressive assault on people’s constitutional rights

On Thursday February 2, the NYPD and Civil rights advocates reached an agreement to limit stop-and-frisks in apartment buildings across the city. The settlement involves interceptions in private buildings under the “Clean Halls” program, which have been disputed as unconstitutional. The “Clean Halls” program is where private landlords gave police the right to patrol their buildings. “Operation Clean Halls has placed New Yorkers, mostly black and Latino, under siege in their own homes in thousands of apartment buildings. 

This aggressive assault on people’s constitutional rights must be stopped,” argued Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. As per CBS News, the NYCLU had reported that in the first nine months of 2016, more than 1,400 innocent New Yorkers were stopped by the NYPD for frisking. While this indicated a 30% reduction from the number of incidents in 2011, it was still an ongoing source of friction. 

As per the NY Daily News, the new settlement resolves the last stop-and-frisk class action against the city, where plaintiffs had alleged that the NYPD officers were stopping, detaining, and sometimes arresting people without any indication of wrongdoing or trespassing. The agreement states that the police may only stop people in or around Clean Halls buildings if they are justified by “the full constitutional requirement of reasonable suspicion for a stop or, for an arrest, probable cause,” said Christopher Dunn, New York Civil Liberties Union Associate Legal Director. 

Also, the main plaintiffs in the suit will be paid $230,000 for damages. The city’s Law Department announced, “This agreement appropriately balances the public’s interest in effective law enforcement with the need to respect the constitutional rights of building residents and their guests.”

By: Ilana Siyance

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