NYPD ends tactic of prolonging stops to check for warrants

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City police department reached a legal settlement Friday that requires it to abandon a practice in which officers use prolonged street stops to check for arrest warrants and ties to other cases, a tactic critics denounced as “digital stop and frisk.”

Under the settlement, officers will only be permitted to conduct warrant searches during street stops if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person stopped “was committing, committed or is about to commit” a crime or if there’s probable cause that they’ve done so.

The NYPD has revised its stop policy and is conducting training. The department sent a message to all officers notifying them of the change and is having it read at each shift’s roll call for 10 days. Violations could result in department discipline, according to the agreement.

The settlement resolves a 2019 class-action lawsuit that challenged the stops, often involving people of color, as an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on illegal detention and unlawful search and seizure.

One plaintiff, Luis Rios, said the practice was an extension of the NYPD’s “racist Stop and Frisk program,” which was significantly curtailed after a judge ruled in 2013 that it was a form of indirect racial profiling. Another plaintiff, Terron Belle, said the NYPD’s lengthy stops were violating “the rights of other Black and Latinx people all over the city.”

“This lawsuit has always been about bringing justice to innocent New Yorkers who are baselessly detained in the street so aggressive NYPD officers can run their IDs,” said plaintiffs’ lawyer Cyrus Joubin.

A spokesperson for the city’s law department, Nicholas Paolucci, said the settlement agreement “was in the best interest of all parties.”

Some law enforcement...