A court-appointed monitor overseeing changes for the New York Police Department has asked a judge to enshrine a new evaluation system for officers that de-emphasizes the number of street stops they make and focuses instead on the lawfulness of those encounters.

The monitor, Peter L. Zimroth, outlined his recommendations in a seven-page letter filed on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. In it, he makes plain the dangers of slipping back toward stop-and-frisk practices driven by a focus on numbers. And he proposes that court approval be required before for any changes are made to elements of the agency’s new performance evaluation system that deal with street stops.

Specifically, Mr. Zimroth asked Judge Analisa Torres to “issue an order that recognizes the significant positive changes that have been made in how the N.Y.P.D. evaluates its officers and also that requires the department to maintain those improvements.”

The recommendation by Mr. Zimroth, who was appointed in 2013, comes ahead of his seventh official report to the court and recounts some illuminating departmental history.

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