NYC asks court to toss judge’s stop-frisk rulings

NEW YORK — The administration of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in its most aggressive push yet to erase the stain of a federal judge’s rulings on police stopand-frisk practices, asked a federal appeals court Saturday to vacate her decisions, which had ordered sweeping changes, including the appointment of a monitor.

The decisions by Judge Shira Scheindlin, of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, had already been halted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit while it considered the city’s appeal of the rulings. But if Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, as he has promised, withdraws the appeal, the court-ordered changes would most likely go into effect.

The city’s filing, which came shortly after midnight, seemed aimed at ensuring that Scheindlin’s rulings disappeared before Bloomberg leaves office and do not detract from his legacy. But if the 2nd Circuit rules in favor of the city, there would be a more immediate ramification: De Blasio, a Democrat, could take office without a Police Department under court supervision.

De Blasio was asked Friday night, while in San Juan, Puerto Rico, attending a conference of Hispanic lawmakers, about the attempt to vacate Scheindlin’s order, which the city had said it would seek to do.

“As I’ve said from the beginning,” de Blasio said, “if the Bloomberg administration had paid attention to the concerns of communities all over New York City and had paid attention to Judge Scheindlin’s concerns, we would have had action a year or two ago, and there never would have been a court order, and there never would have been a monitor.

“We’ll see what happens over these next seven or eight weeks,” he said, adding that he looked “forward to working with the monitor.”

An aide to de Blasio said Saturday that the Bloomberg administration had not consulted the mayor-elect about the city’s move to vacate Scheindlin’s decisions, noting that de Blasio did not support such an effort. A Law Department spokesman also said the city had not coordinated its legal strategy with de Blasio or his staff.

In the filing Saturday, Michael Cardozo, the corporation counsel, cited what he called Scheindlin’s “pattern of tainted decisions,” which he said “continue to unfairly and improperly cloud the public’s perception of the NYPD.”

“The district court’s orders lend credence to the notion that the NYPD unfairly targets minorities for stops and frisks, undermining its ability to carry out its mission effectively,” Cardozo wrote.

He also made reference to Scheindlin’s findings that in stopping and frisking people, the department had violated the Constitution and resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling.”

“Wrongly labeling the NYPD — and the City — a racial profiling entity and flouter of the Fourth Amendment should be sufficient injustice to vacate the Orders,” Cardozo wrote.

Burt Neuborne, the lawyer who has filed papers seeking to present a defense of Scheindlin before the appeals court, said: “I never thought I would see the corporation counsel of the City of New York stoop to such tactics. It’s judicial McCarthyism. And, for what? Because the NYPD’s feelings are hurt? That’s the only reason the city gives for this extraordinary attack on the judge.”

In staying Scheindlin’s rulings last month, a three-judge panel criticized her, saying she “ran afoul” of the judicial code of conduct and compromised “the appearance of impartiality” by appearing to steer the stop-and-frisk case to herself in 2007 and granting interviews this year to news organizations while a decision was still pending.

It also removed her from continuing to supervise the case, which has been given to a new judge.

Cardozo also argued that Scheindlin’s role in steering the litigation to her courtroom in the first place clouded everything that followed.

“The very nature of the judicial misconduct,” he wrote, “has necessarily created a situation where the District Court’s impartiality throughout the litigation might reasonably be questioned, at a minimum.”

In January 2008, the plaintiffs, at Scheindlin’s suggestion, had marked the lawsuit, known as Floyd v. City of New York, as related to an earlier stop-and-frisk lawsuit that Scheindlin had presided over since 1999. That meant that the lawsuit bypassed the random case-assignment process that governs which judge hears which case.

Scheindlin has defended this, suggesting that it made procedural sense. But in its ruling Oct. 31, the appellate panel found that Scheindlin improperly applied the related-case rule.