An article in the New York Law Journal reports that US District Judge Shira Scheindlin for the Southern District of New York has appointed a panel of law professors to assist a court-appointed facilitator in developing remedies in the case of Floyd v. City of New York, the stop-and-frisk litigation. Brooklyn Law School Professor of Law I. Bennett Capers will serve as chair of the Academic Advisory Council to assist facilitator Nicholas Turner of the VERA Institute of Justice. Turner will work with the NYPD and the Academic Advisory Council in a mediation process to develop reforms. Longer-term changes include a trial run of body-worn cameras in the precinct in each borough that saw the highest number of stops.
The second part of Judge Scheindlin’s opinion in last month’s ruling lays out her remedies. Those include “immediate changes” to the NYPD’s implementation of stop-and-frisk, such as revisions to NYPD training materials, more thorough documentation of stops through a new form and better and more thorough activity log records, as well as a better standard for the NYPD’s supervising officers to assess the constitutionality of the stops their subordinates are making.
Other members of the panel are retired Brooklyn Law Professor William Hellerstein, Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, Alafair Burke of the School of Law at Hofstra University, Miriam Gohara, visiting assistant professor at Columbia Law School, Taja-Nia Henderson of Rutgers School of Law-Newark, Tanya Hernandez of Fordham University School of Law, Conrad Johnson of Columbia Law School, K. Babe Howell of CUNY Law School, Olatunde Johnson of Columbia Law School, Tracey Meares of Yale Law School, Janice Tudy-Jackson of Columbia Law School and Steve Zeidman of CUNY School of Law.
The appointment of the Council comes one day after the Judge’s Order denying New York City’s request for a stay pending appeal of her appointment of a police department monitor to help develop and implement reforms of stop-and-frisk practices. The city has moved for an expedited appeal in the case the case and is expected to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for a stay.
For background information on the issue of stop and frisk, see SARA, the BLS Library Catalog, for the 27 page internet report Stop-and-Frisk 2011 NYCLU Briefing.
