Mayor De Blasio’s decision to withdraw Michael Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk appeal and instead settle the case, as he announced last month, is not sitting well with the police. Five different unions (patrolmen, sergeants, captains, lieutenants, and detectives) filed today to block the city’s settlement, arguing that the original ruling’s conclusions, which found the tactic to discriminate on the basis of race, “unfairly besmirch the reputations of the men and women of the NYPD, imposed facially overbroad remedies, and exposed the NYPD to an unwarranted and indefinite period of federal supervision.” And so, despite the number of stops dropping dramatically and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton calling the problem “more or less solved,” the legal resolution that seemed so close is still not quite there yet.
