Floyd v. City of New York

Facts

Between 2004 and 2009, the New York City Policy Department (NYPD) implemented a department-wide “stop and frisk” program, which allowed for the temporary detention and questioning of individuals to find weapons and contraband. This policy resulted in the unlawful detention of thousands of New Yorkers. For example, over the course of these five years, NYPD officers stopped individuals on over 2.8 million occasions. According to the officers’ reports, approximately 170,00 of these stops were conducted without documented reasonable suspicion of a crime, as required by the Fourth Amendment. Nearly 9 out of 10 of the stops conducted did not result in probable cause to arrest the individual. In addition, over half of the stops were of Black people, thirty percent were of Latinos, and only ten percent were of white people. Four Black men from New York City (Class Representative Plaintiffs) filed a putative class action lawsuit against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and other government entities (Defendants) seeking a declaration that Defendants’ “stop and frisk” policies violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and seeking an injunction mandating a change of those policies. The proposed class consisted of individuals who were subjected to the stop and frisk policy without lawful cause to be stopped and frisked under the Fourth Amendment, and a sub class of those stopped on the basis of being Black or Latino, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.