Global Courant
Mylan Denerstein, a federally appointed court monitor, conducted a study on the effectiveness of an NYPD initiative using the “stop and frisk” method. The tactic known as “stop and frisk” is being used as part of a New York initiative aimed at gun violence in the city. The monitor found that the initiative harms communities of color. Mayor Eric Adams was said to have “serious concerns” about Denerstein’s methodology and did not learn of her findings until news outlets reported on them.
New York City’s reliance on the tactic known as “stop and frisk” as part of a new initiative to combat gun violence is harming communities of color and breaking the law, a court-appointed federal observer reported Monday.
Monitor Mylan Denerstein said the NYPD’s neighborhood security teams — special units deployed over the past 14 months to seize guns in high-crime areas — were engaged in “unconstitutional policing” by stopping and frisking too many people without justification.
In one police station, Denerstein said, only 41 percent of stops, 32 percent of searches and 26 percent of searches were lawful.
The Neighborhood Security Teams, a replacement for the anti-crime units the NYPD disbanded in 2021, operate in 34 areas responsible for 80% of the city’s violent crime — largely communities of color. Of the people who stopped the teams, Denerstein said, 97% are black or Hispanic.
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A spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams said city officials have “serious concerns” about Denerstein’s methodology and that they only learned of her findings after news outlets reported on them.
The spokesman, Fabien Levy, said shootings have fallen since the Neighborhood Security Teams were established.
NYPD officers patrol the surrounding areas of Rockefeller Center in New York City on December 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File))
Officers assigned to the units “have enhanced training and oversight to ensure that we not only keep New Yorkers safe, but also protect their civil liberties,” Levy said, adding that “any unconstitutional stoppage is unacceptable, and we will strive to do better.” for New Yorkers every day.”
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Denerstein said she began her review after Adams announced in March 2022 that the NYPD was deploying neighborhood security teams in some counties to combat gun violence. Team members, wearing custom uniforms and driving unmarked cars, conduct checks, searches and searches in their assigned neighborhoods.
“Unfortunately, the results are disappointing,” Denerstein wrote.
Despite their training and experience, officers assigned to Neighborhood Security Teams “generally appear to stop, frisk, and frisk individuals at an unsatisfactory level of compliance. Too many people are stopped, frisked, and frisked unlawfully.”
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD had violated the civil rights of black and Hispanic New Yorkers with arrest and searches, which was part of an effort to get guns and drugs off the streets by regularly stopping people on the street and to search.
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US District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the arrests constituted indirect racial profiling. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a champion of the tactic, has since apologized for using it.
Since the ruling, the department has claimed a sharp decline in stops, averaging about 11,730 per year from 2016 to 2022, compared to a high of nearly 686,000 stops in 2011.
Black and Hispanic people continue to be targeted by the vast majority of arrests, accounting for 89% of all arrests by 2022, according to NYPD data collected by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
