Twelve Years After Ruling, NYPD Still Fails on Stop-and-Frisk Compliance, Monitor Says

More than a decade after a landmark court ruling, New York City’s police remain entangled in illegal stop-and-frisk practices—a problem that spotlights the city’s struggle to square security with constitutional rights.

On a brisk day in Manhattan, a small but telling statistic surfaced in a federal courtroom: in 2023, more than one in four “stop and frisk” encounters conducted by New York City police officers lacked legal justification, according to a new report by a court-appointed monitor. This figure, revealed after twelve years of federal scrutiny, amounts to thousands of unlawful stops—a phenomenon the city was meant to have relegated to its past after a searing 2013 court decision.

That year, Judge Shira Scheindlin found in Floyd v. City of New York that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics systematically violated the constitutional rights of Black and Latino New Yorkers. The decision mandated sweeping reforms, court oversight, and the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure compliance. Yet last week, Mylan Denerstein, the latest monitor, delivered a grim diagnosis: the NYPD remains out of step with both the law and its reform obligations.

Denerstein pointed to three persistent failures. First, a stubborn prevalence of self-initiated, unlawful stops by officers. Second, chronic underreporting of such encounters. Third, an accountability gap: supervisors continue to sign off on dubious stops, rarely calling officers to account for repeat infractions. “This is not the year-end report that I had hoped to submit,” she conceded with dry understatement.

For New York City, these failures are hardly academic. The mass adoption of stop-and-frisk in the 2000s—peaking at nearly 700,000 stops in 2011—stoked enduring distrust between the NYPD and large swathes of the city’s population, especially minority communities. Despite a steep drop in reported stops since the verdict, the staying power of unconstitutional policing tactics bodes ill for any efforts to restore faith in law enforcement.

The implications reach beyond the intangible realm of trust. Policing practices perceived as discriminatory cast a long shadow over jury pools, witness cooperation, and neighbourhood stability—fraying the bonds necessary for crime prevention itself. Moreover, the stubborn underreporting of stops raises legitimate doubts about any progress the department claims. If stops go uncounted, trends and reforms are left to drift in a statistical fog.

Nor are the stakes merely local. New York’s uneasy truce with court-mandated reform is watched by police departments nationwide—many chafing at similar constraints, all wary of the reputational and fiscal exposure that comes when “broken windows” tactics breach constitutional lines. The 2013 court ruling and its aftermath are a textbook for compliance, but also a warning of how easily well-intended reforms can stagnate.

Complicating matters, popular unease with crime—however buoyed or subdued by actual statistics—remains a perennial feature of New York politics. Business leaders and local officials continue to close ranks behind NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to retain her. Department lawyers argue that extraordinary effort has been poured into training, policy rewrites, and community outreach since the courts intervened. On paper, at least, the NYPD claims to be an institution reformed.

Reality, however, lags behind rhetoric. The monitor’s latest findings suggest that internal culture lags policy, and that supervisors are all too willing to rubber-stamp questionable behaviour as lawful. Meanwhile, data transparency stalls: for every reported stop, how many go unrecorded? When police insist they are in compliance even as monitors find the contrary, trust erodes—on both sides of the badge.

Supervision and reform fatigue

New York’s predicament is not unique. In Chicago, federal oversight resulted in a sharp drop in reported stops, but watchdogs detected a similar pattern of underreporting. In Los Angeles, reforms have been patchy and contentious. The global backdrop is instructive: London’s Metropolitan Police have also come under fire for disproportional stops of minorities, with comparable tensions surfacing in Paris and Sydney. Urban policing in the 21st century is not immune from the frictions and structural flaws of the past.

Yet, progress is possible. New York’s own experience since the original ruling shows how reduced volume can at least rein in the worst excesses; reported stops have plummeted by more than 90% compared to the years before the court’s intervention. The question is whether quality of policing has kept pace with this numerical retreat, or whether misconduct has simply gone further underground.

We favour neither complacency nor theatrical reform. The latest report should spur city leaders, civil libertarians, and police brass alike to undertake a more rigorous audit of compliance and culture. Supervisors must be granted both the incentive and the tools to correct illegal stops at the source. Data transparency ought to be elevated to a core institutional value; without reliable numbers, meaningful reform cannot be measured, let alone maintained.

The tension between public safety and civil liberties is far from new. But when old habits prove resistant to the pressure of both federal judges and public opinion, it is clear that institutional change depends less on slogans than on the gritty mechanics of supervision, discipline, and data.

Where New York goes next—further fines, stronger training, perhaps a tightening of judicial oversight—will shape the city’s social fabric for years to come. What is clear is that twelve years after a resounding legal rebuke, the task of harmonising policing and constitutional rights remains unfinished business. The city’s reputation, and the daily experience of millions, depend on doing better. ■