|
| New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly responds to a question about his department's stop-and-frisk policy, during a news conference at police headquarters, in New York, Friday, Nov. 1, 2013. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday that the ruling by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin would be on hold pending the outcome of an appeal by the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has touted the tactic as a major reason crime rates have continued to fall in the city. |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- Front-running mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio faces political and
legal dilemmas now that a judge's ruling critical of the police
department's stop-and-frisk tactic has been blocked.
The
federal judge's summertime rebuke of the department's stop-and-frisk
policy as discriminatory to blacks and Hispanics was a ringing
affirmation of one of de Blasio's major campaign themes, helping propel
him from also-ran to Democratic nominee nearly 40 points ahead in the
polls days before the election.
But on
Thursday a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the ruling and took
the extraordinary step of booting the judge off the case for "running
afoul" of the judicial code of conduct.
The
decision arms Republican nominee Joe Lhota with a new line of attack as
he insists that a de Blasio victory would handcuff law enforcement and
return the city to its crime-filled past. Lhota, a deputy in former
Mayor Rudy Giuliani's administration, has been a staunch defender of
stop-and-frisk, and on Friday he released an online video saying "the
entire premise of the de Blasio campaign collapsed" with the appeals
court decision.
It's unclear how the federal case will proceed if de Blasio, the city's public advocate, wins Tuesday's election.
Previously,
de Blasio said he would drop the city's appeal of U.S. District Court
Judge Shira Scheindlin ruling, which ordered a broad set of reforms to
the police department's use of the tactic for stopping, questioning and
sometimes frisking people. But he could choose to settle with those
urging the reforms, eliminating federal oversight and allowing him to
manage the police department as he sees fit.
He
reiterated Friday that he wasn't going to pursue the appeal but added:
"We don't know what the next steps are in the legal process."
During
the past decade, there have been nearly 5 million stops, mostly of
minority men. Only about 10 percent of the stops result in arrests or
summonses, and weapons were found about 2 percent of the time.
Scheindlin
presided over a lengthy bench trial in which black and Hispanic men
testified that they had been improperly stopped because of their races,
and she appointed a federal monitor to oversee changes to training and
supervision.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly
said Friday that the department would continue to look into one
suggestion ordered by Scheindlin: the possibility of officers using
body-worn cameras. But he said the department already does sophisticated
stop-and-frisk training that's unparalleled in the country and many of
the reforms were unnecessary.
"In my judgment,
the quantum of evidence certainly was just not there to make this
sweeping indictment of the entire police department on something called
indirect racial profiling," Kelly said. "We don't racially profile. It's
against our regulations. It's against the law."
City
officials say the case should be given a full hearing before a new
judge regardless of who wins Tuesday's election. The three-judge panel
of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has said it would hear oral
arguments on the appeal after March 24.
Even
if de Blasio chooses to dismiss the appeal, the case may not be over.
Police unions filed motions to become parties in the case and could take
it up should the city drop out.
"The
sergeants want to make sure that they have a seat at the table as the
case progresses both at the district and appellate level," said Anthony
Coles, who represents the Sergeants Benevolent Association.
The
appeals court has put on hold any reforms and any movement on the case
in the district court. It's unclear when the new judge, Analisa Torres,
will rule on whether the police unions can join. It's also unclear
whether she will amend Scheindlin's ruling should the appeal be dropped.
The
panel said it removed Scheindlin because she misapplied a related case
ruling that allowed her to take the case and gave media interviews
during the trial. Scheindlin said she consented to the interviews under
the condition she wouldn't comment on the ongoing case and didn't.
One
of the attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights who tried
the case, Sunita Patel, said she thought the ruling would stick
regardless of the judge.
"Any fair-minded
court can look at the 8,000 pages of trial testimony, the lengthy record
in this case, and a careful review will show there was no impropriety,"
she said.
