Data does not support claim that racial disparities in NYPD stops no longer exist, lawyers say

New York, April 12, 2024 – In response to the report just filed by the court-appointed monitor in the landmark case, Floyd v. City of New York, stop-and-frisk attorneys issued the following comments:

“The monitor’s report erroneously asserts that there are diminished racial disparities in stops of Black and Latinx New Yorkers by New York Police Department officers, while acknowledging that a significant number of stops are not documented,” said Samah Sisay, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Floyd plaintiffs’ counsel and our experts believe that the report’s analysis of racial disparities is flawed and the NYPD needs to take further actions to ensure 14th amendment compliance.”

“This report finds that, although the total number of stops has decreased since 2013, the overall percentage of stops by race and ethnicity remain largely the same. In other words, the NYPD still disproportionately targets Black and Hispanic people for unconstitutional stops. The report also makes clear that after over 10 years of this monitorship the NYPD has not yet begun monitoring their officers’ compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment. After over 10 years of a monitorship, the people of this City deserve better from its police force,” said co-counsel Jonathan Moore of Beldock Levin Hoffman LLP.

Among the methodological and analytical problems with the monitor’s report:

• Severe under-reporting undermines validity of conclusions: The report itself says that, based on a random sample of body camera footage, 31.4 percent of stops are undocumented. There is good reason to surmise that underreporting masks racial disparities because police are less likely to activate, or more likely to deactivate, their camera when they are making constitutionally questionable stops. 
  
  
• The report undervalues finding that “racial disparities in frisks and searches still remain.” The report says racial disparities in outcomes of searches have decreased, yet severe disparities persist in stops – the very unconstitutional practice that gave rise to the Floyd lawsuit in the first place. In fact, these disparities are virtually unchanged since the case was tried in 2013 and a significant share, the report notes, “is driven by a small number of [geographical] areas.”