City Settles Stop And Frisk Lawsuits
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The city will pay out more than $170,000 to settle with nine people who claimed they were illegally stopped and frisked by police at city housing projects.
The settlements are part of a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and the Legal Aid Society.
Sources tell NY1 the individual payments range from $5,000 to $75,000.
Six cases are still pending.
Those who sued said they were unlawfully stopped and frisked as part of trespassing-enforcement policies in public housing, which include floor-to-floor sweeps of high-rises known as vertical patrols.
While police say the patrols are one of the best ways to provide security in public housing, civil rights groups argue it leads to racial profiling.
"They result in the routine intrusive stops and interrogations, and often arrests, or at least detention of hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers each year who are doing absolutely nothing wrong aside from visiting somebody in public housing, or coming and going from where they live," said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"They don't want to ask questions like, 'Do you live here' and all that. I got ran up on going home, and they came out the back of the staircase while I was going to my door, and they stopped me, asked me where I was going. I was telling them I was going home. They searched me for my ID and everything, they didn't believe me," said one city housing resident.
In response, New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said, "Police officers assigned to public housing developments try to provide safety for the low-income residents who live there that occupants of doormen buildings elsewhere take for granted. One of the ways they accomplish this is through vertical patrols."
The city says the settlements are not an admission of any wrongdoing.
The NYPD says last year it revised its rules for high-rise sweeps and started training officers on the legality of taking action.