NYPD Must Give ACLU Data On Stops & Frisks

MANHATTAN (CN) - A state judge has ordered the New York Police Department to turn over to the ACLU its electronic database on 850,000 stop-and-frisk police stops conducted since Jan. 1, 2006. The ACLU claims the database will show that the NYPD unconstitutionally targets blacks and Latinos.

New York County Court Judge Marilyn Diamond gave the NYPD 60 days to turn over the database. The ACLU claims that blacks and Latinos accounted for 90 percent of the stop-and-frisk encounters with police, and that though white people make up more than 35 percent of the city's population, only 11 percent of the people stopped and frisked were white.

Judge Diamond rejected the NYPD's claims that the information is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, and that its disclosure could "provide the means by which an individual who wishes to inflict harm upon a particular officer could plot out the exact location of the officer at a given time based on the information contained in the database."

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