A federal judge ruled that the New York City Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy violates individuals' constitutional rights because it intentionally discriminates based on race, CBS/AP reported on Monday. This marks a significant rebuke to the New York mayor's defense that it is a crime -fighting tool used by police department.
U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin appointed an independent monitor to oversee changes changes to the policy.
The judge accused the police department's senior officials of violating law "through their deliberate indifference to unconstitutional stops, frisks and searches."
"They have received both actual and constructive notice since at least 1999 of widespread Fourth Amendment violations occurring as a result of the NYPD's stop and frisk practices. Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations," Scheindlin wrote in the report.
"Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often. The NYPD's practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD's standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods," she added.
The city did not have immediate response to the ruling and news reports said that four men have already sued, saying they were unfairly targeted because of their race.
"No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life," Scheindlin added.
A 2012 New York Civil Liberties Union report showed a sharp, steady increase in police stops over the course of Bloomberg's three terms in office - to 685,724 in 2011 from 160,851 stops in 2003, with about half of the 2011 stops resulting in physical searches, Reuters reported.
