Reforming stop-and-frisk

N.Y. mayor says the city and civil rights attorneys agree to work on changes to divisive police tactic.

NEW YORK — After a long-fought legal battle over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday that the city had reached an agree- ment with civil rights attorneys that would bring about major reforms of the policy.

Under the agreement, a court-appointed monitor will oversee for three years the NYPD’s reform efforts aimed at ending discrimination, the mayor said. Groups that have been affected by the policy will have input.

Once the agreement has been confirmed by the court, the city will quickly move to withdraw its appeal begun by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. De Blasio, the first Democrat elected mayor in New York since 1989, made reforming the stop- and-frisk policy a cornerstone of his campaign.

“This is a defining moment in our history,” de Blasio said. “It’s a defining moment for millions of our families, especially those with young men of color. And it will lay the foundation for not only keeping us the safest big city in America, but making us safer still.”

In August, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin wrote that the NYPD had turned a “blind eye” toward the constitutional implications of its long-running strategy of proactively stopping and searching residents who were often black or Latino.

The policy allowed police to use the tactic if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that a person had committed or was about to commit a crime.

De Blasio said the reforms would free up police officers to focus on community policing and improve relations damaged by the stop-and-frisk policy.