NYCLU Sues NYPD to Force Public Release of Stop-and-Frisk Database (11/13/2007)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
The New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a lawsuit in State Supreme
Court challenging the NYPD’s refusal to disclose an electronic database
detailing police stops of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, most of whom
were black and Latino.
In July, the NYCLU served the NYPD with a formal legal request to turnover
the database under the state’s Freedom of Information Law. The department
rejected the request at the end of August and denied the NYCLU’s administrative
appeal on October 15.
The NYCLU requested the information to allow for an independent analysis of
the department’s stop-and-frisk practices, which have been the subject of
enormous controversy since the 1999 shooting death of Amadou Diallo. The
controversy was rekindled last February when the department, under pressure from
the NYCLU, released printed reports revealing that more than half a million New
Yorkers were stopped in 2006 alone.
“The NYPD cannot conceal its stop-and-frisk practices from the public,” said
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU. “New Yorkers have a right to
know if the police are stopping people on racially biased grounds.”
According to the printed reports released in February, in 2006 the NYPD
completed stop-and-frisk maneuvers on 508,540 individuals. Of that number,
458,104 people – about 90 percent of all people stopped – were engaged in no
unlawful activity whatsoever, as they were neither given a summons nor arrested.
Nearly 86 percent of all persons stopped were black or Hispanic.
While the printed reports released by the department provide important
information, any sophisticated analysis of the role of race in police stops
requires access to the database. Recognizing this, the NYPD, while refusing to
provide the database to the NYCLU or the City Council, provided it to the RAND
Corporation, which it has retained to study the stop-and-frisk practices.
“The secrecy surrounding the NYPD must stop,” said Christopher Dunn, NYCLU
associate legal director and lead counsel on the case. “If the police department
will not voluntarily release the information needed to independently examine its
stop-and-frisk practices, we are confident that the courts will require it do
so.”
Also serving as co-counsel on the case are Rebecca Bers, Meredith Laitner and
Samantha Marks, students from New York University Law School’s Civil Rights
Clinic, and Professor Claudia Angelos, who teaches in the clinic.
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