December 5, 2013, New York – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the organization litigating the landmark stop-and-frisk case, Floyd v. City of New York, released the following statement in response to Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s appointment of William Bratton as New York City’s next Police Commissioner. 

Given Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s commitment to dropping the appeal in Floyd, we expect incoming Commissioner Bill Bratton will embrace the full remedial order as a roadmap to meaningful stop-and-frisk reform and changing the police department’s relationships with the communities it serves. Bratton previously addressed unconstitutional racial discrimination in the Los Angeles Police Department, working with a court-appointed monitor to implement change. At the same time, we hope Bratton’s appointment is not a signal from de Blasio that the NYPD will be ramping up so-called “broken windows” policing, surveillance, and numbers-driven policing. As Mr. Bratton himself has stated, constitutional policing is not inconsistent with effective policing. Mr. Bratton has implemented reform before under a court-ordered process, and we are hopeful he will work with community representatives and civil liberties groups do the same with the NYPD.