The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics were on trial yesterday, with a Bronx district-attorney bureau chief testifying that cops illegally stop minorities outside low-income apartments in the borough.
A suit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union claims police under Commissioner Ray Kelly regularly stop and arrest lawful tenants and visitors, while city attorneys argue the NYPD has already adopted reforms to the 20-year-old program, which targets illegal drug use and sales.
“I told the Police Department, ‘Stop, we can’t do this,’ ” testified Bronx DA’s Office bureau chief Jeannette Rucker, who spearheaded the office’s refusal to prosecute some trespassing cases without first interviewing the arresting officer.
“We have to clean up our act,” she said in Manhattan federal court.
NYCLU attorney Christopher Dunn said expert analysis of police data revealed “no justification” for 62 percent of almost 1,900 trespassing stops outside buildings enrolled in the “Operation Clean Halls” anti-crime program last year.
“These stops are an assault on the sanctity of the home,” Dunn said.
City lawyer Brenda Cooke shot back, claiming the study used a “flawed and unreliable analysis” to overstate the number of unlawful stops by ignoring the “additional circumstances” cops noted on the back of their stop-and-frisk paperwork.
The hearing yesterday focused on the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction on cops stopping people outside Clean Halls buildings in The Bronx, while the broader case concerns stops inside and outside Clean Halls buildings across the city, Dunn said.
Rucker’s testimony laid out in detail how her office reached the unusual step of refusing to prosecute certain questionable trespassing cases.
Rucker first became concerned in 2007 when judges began dismissing trespassing cases “left and right” and defense attorneys began to complain of overzealous trespassing arrests, she said.
She said she met with the NYPD legal bureau and reps from each borough’s DA’s office to discuss the arrests in 2011.
After receiving multiple letters this year complaining of trespassing arrests — including of people busted in their own buildings — the Bronx DA’s Office stopped accepting trespasser affidavits and insisted on interviewing the arresting officers.