Johannesburg, Mar 19 (ANI): A lawsuit accusing the New York Police Department (NYPD) to be racist has gone underway, with a lawyer claiming that NYPD officers have been wrongly stopping many young men based solely on their race.
Although Darius Charney from the Centre for Constitutional Rights, US, which filed the suit in 2008, admitted that the NYPD's practice of detaining and sometimes searching anyone officers deemed suspicious is legal, he claimed that the department is illegally targeting black and Hispanic men because of their race, News24 reports.
Insisting that the policy has led to numerous frightening and degrading experiences for many New Yorkers over the last decade, Charney said that the practice is arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional.
According to the Centre's director Vincent Warren, they are putting the NYPD on trial, with the stakes being the constitutional rights of millions of New Yorkers.
The NYPD's policy, known as "stop and frisk," has prompted an emotional debate in this city, leading to the lawsuit being granted class-action status.
This meant that thousands of people who have been stopped over the years could potentially join the complaint introduced by the Centre for Constitutional Rights on behalf of four black men, the report added. (ANI)
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