
The NYPD has a pattern and practice of illegally stopping innocent people in public areas outside thousands of private apartment buildings in the Bronx and must immediately end this unconstitutional practice, a U.S. District Court judge ruled this morning. The victory comes as part of a federal class-action lawsuit filed in March by the New York Civil Liberties Union, The Bronx Defenders, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the law firm of Shearman & Sterling LLP challenging the NYPD’s enforcement of Operation Clean Halls – a citywide program within the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk regime that allows police officers to patrol in and around certain private apartment buildings. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin also found that for years the NYPD has known or should have known that its officers routinely violate constitutional rights through the Clean Halls program. Nonetheless the Department fails to adequately train officers about when they may legally make trespass stops, and that this practice “has risen to the level of deliberate indifference.”

