Settlement of lawsuit over New York taxi rider frisks
Source: Reuters
Settlement of lawsuit over New York taxi rider frisks
By Basil Katz
NEW YORK | Tue May 15, 2012 5:56pm EDT
(Reuters) - New York police officers at their daily roll call are now being told they may not systemically search taxi passengers for weapons, in a deal to settle a lawsuit over the city's controversial stop and frisk program.
The lawsuit said the NYPD had extended its hotly contested stop-and-frisk practices to include regular passenger searches during inspections of taxis and livery cabs that participate in the Taxi/Livery Robbery Inspection Program, run by police.
The lawsuit, which was settled on Monday, was filed last May in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The NYCLU maintains that black and Latino New Yorkers are stopped with alarming frequency, even though in the great majority of cases they are found to have done nothing wrong. In 2011, police performed more stop and frisk searches of young black men than the total number of young black men living in New York, the NYCLU said.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/15/us-usa-crime-newyork-idUSBRE84E1HF20120515