Today, five NYPD unions filed paperwork to block the city's settlement of the stop-and-frisk ruling.
Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration filed papers to drop the appeal of Judge Shira A. Schiendlin's August 2013 ruling that the department's initiative needed to be reformed. Now, unions representing patrolmen up to sergeants are claiming that de Blasio's move was a political one, as opposed to a decision made for the good of police and the city.
According to the Daily Intelligencer, the unions claim that the original ruling, which argued that the crime-fighting method was discriminatory, "unfairly besmirch the reputations of the men and women of the NYPD, imposed facially overbroad remedies, and exposed the NYPD to an unwarranted and indefinite period of federal supervision."
However, Center for Constitutional Rights legal director Baher Azmy told the Huffington Post that beliefs that unions have the right to defend stop-and-frisk because the city won't are off-target. "While they appear to disagree with Judge Scheindlin's rulings, that gives them no more right to participate than the average person on the street," he said.
What's truly interesting, as the Daily Intelligencer points out, is that the number of stops have dropped, and (kind of) new Commissioner Bill Bratton even said the issued has been "more or less solved." Still, the city appears poised to continue the fight.
[via The Daily Intelligencer and The Huffington Post]
