Judge who wrote NYC's stop-and-frisk rulings says opposition by city leaders was 'all about fear'
New York City’s former mayor and police commissioner “didn’t seem to get” community fears about brutality from law enforcement, says Shira A. Scheindlin, the federal judge who issued the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk ruling.
Sheindlin, whose 2013 ruling found that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy violated the rights of minorities, recently retired, the New York Times reports. In an interview with the paper, she spoke about Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, and Raymond Kelly, who lead the city’s police department. Both men had significant objections to Scheindlin’s rulings in the case.
“They seemed out of touch with the issues that the communities cared about,” Scheindlin told the paper. “They didn’t seem to understand the impact of these policies on real people and real neighborhoods and real communities and the detrimental impact it was having, even on policing. And that’s the point. They didn’t seem to get it. It was all about fear—New York would blow up.”
The case eventually settled, with the city agreeing to drop its objections to Scheindlin’s findings. Between 2011 and 2015, she told the New York Times, the number of recorded police stops in New York City went from 685,000 to 24,000.
“Think of all the lives that has changed, the lives that that has touched,” she said. “The lives of people who were stopped for no good reason and how intrusive that is.”
Scheindlin announced her retirement in March. A former federal prosecutor, she has said that she plans to join a large New York City law firm as of counsel, and is also interested in doing some arbitration and mediation work.
Related article:
ABA Journal: “Has ‘stop and frisk’ been stopped?”
ABAJournal.com: “NYC police unions have no standing to intervene in stop-and-frisk settlements, says federal judge”
ABAJournal.com: “NYC proposes settlement in stop-and-frisk cases; police union has ‘serious concerns’”
