As for the proposed remedy of a court monitor, expanded training and supervision of the police on stops and other measures, including more detailed reporting of stops, Grossman said, "the remedy was designed to fix a problem that doesn't exist."
She told the court that 52 percent of the force are minority members, and that the plaintiffs "blatantly disregard that NYPD officers take these jobs to help people—not to become writers."
Cooke, meanwhile, promised the court that the defense would dissect the expert testimony of Columbia Law Professor Jeffery Fagan.
Cooke said Fagan's findings that 7 percent of stops between 2004 and 2009 were unjustifiable must be revisited, that the number was reduced to 6 percent. The analysis, she added, was "flawed, biased and unreliable," raising the possibility that, "we could reach the point" where hardly any stops would be unjustifiable.
"The question is, how close to perfect does the NYPD have to be?" Cooke said.
She also said that Fagan made the mistake of "using the wrong benchmark—he uses population"—in the analyzing of the data, an approach that "has been discredited in the criminal justice field."
"Crime suspect data," Cooke said, "is the better and more reliable benchmark."
Two witnesses testified yesterday, out of a dozen black and Hispanic men who say they were targeted because of their race.
One, Devin Almonor, the son of a police officer, said he was thrown against an unmarked car and handcuffed when he was 13 on his way home. He is 16 now.
The second, Floyd, testified that he was wrongly stopped twice. Both said they were testifying because they didn't want the same injustice to happen to other people. Floyd, 33, is now a medical school student.
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Michael
As a white man stopped numerous times, simply because I can only afford to live in a mostly minority neighborhood, I hope a monitor is assigned. When the NYPD stopped only SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE, it took more guns off the street. Now that they stop whomever they want, whenever they want, far less guns are found (which means I get to worry about having a gun pointed at me, by either a police officer or a criminal....). If only Bloomturd cared as much about fighting gun crime as she does my soda intake or whether I can see my cigarette brand when buying a pack......
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