The NYPD’s critics won’t be happy until cops no longer stop anyone — for anything. Unfortunately, those critics include the guy whom Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to give way too much power over the police: court-appointed monitor Peter Zimroth.
In a new 94-page report, Zimroth claims cops still aren’t stopping, frisking and arresting suspects properly. Too often, he says, they’re poorly trained in how to make — and document — stops.
“Many appear not to understand what is expected of them,” he says. Nor have they been warned about their “implicit bias.” And many don’t cite reasons for their actions on official forms, so he can’t tell if their stops meet his requirements.
Well, what did he expect?
In 2014, de Blasio settled a case by agreeing to the obnoxious orders of Judge Shira Scheindlin in the stop-and-frisk case, even after a higher court stayed her ruling and kicked her off the case over her conduct.
Her orders included installing Zimroth and a ridiculously complex set of rules for cops — rules drafted by lawyers and pushed by cop-hating, pro-thug activists.
Surprise, not: Cops are now making mistakes, ignoring the rules or giving up on stops altogether. After all, they risk punishment for judgment calls or accidental errors in completing forms. And they know Team de Blasio won’t have their backs.
Big picture: Cops have now cut out almost all the stops they’d been making. In 2011, they made nearly 686,000 stops; in 2013, just 192,000. Last year, they made about 24,000 — a 97 percent drop from the peak.
And still Zimroth finds fault — though there’s never been a credible finding that any stops police made violated the Constitution. Mayor Mike Bloomberg was set to appeal Scheindlin’s decision when de Blasio took office and settled the case — in favor of the plaintiffs and against the cops.
So today, stop-and-frisk is a rarely used tool — yet the cop-bashers still insist on putting new handcuffs on the police.