Stop-frisk judge won’t tackle virus policing

The judge overseeing the NYPD’s reform of stop-andfrisk will not get involved in allegations of race-based COVID-19 enforcement, ruling it’s not her place to tackle “a different set of potentially unconstitutional practices.”

“If individuals have been injured by racial bias in the NYPD’s making of arrests or use of force in the context of COVID-19 or curfew enforcement, they have the right to pursue those allegations in a (lawsuit),” Manhattan Federal Judge Analisa Torres wrote in a decision Wednesday.

“It is not within this court’s authority to amplify its prior rulings to encompass a different set of potentially unconstitutional practices.”

Civil rights lawyers in May asked Torres to investigate why blacks and Hispanics make up an overwhelming majority of those issued summonses and arrested for violating social distancing rules.

Torres is overseeing the NYPD’s reforms of its stopand-frisk practices, which were ruled unconstitutional in 2013. The judge ruled that the department’s enforcement of social distancing did not fall in the purview stop-and-frisk .

Peter Zimroth, the courtappointed monitor working with the courts to oversee the NYPD’s reform of stop-andfrisk, also was reluctant to get involved in coronavirus controversies. Zimroth said he lacked jurisdiction and resources to tackle the social distancing issue.

“This ruling is a missed opportunity to bring muchneeded accountability for the NYPD’s enforcement of social distancing rules disproportionately against Black and Latinx New Yorkers ... ” said Legal Aid Society attorney Corey Stoughton.