Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that his administration will dismiss a lawsuit filed by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg that aimed to scrap a law prohibiting biased-based profiling by the NYPD. File photo
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that his administration will dismiss the lawsuit brought against the City Council in former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s final days in office that was an attempt to block a new law aiming to prevent racial profiling by police.
The move follows a campaign pledge to drop the litigation as part of an effort to address what he has called a broken stop-and-frisk policy and help rebuild the relationship between the police and community.
Passed by the City Council in August 2013, Local Law 71 prohibits police officers from relying on actual or perceived race, national origin, color, creed, age, citizenship status, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or housing status as the determinative factor in initiating law enforcement action against individuals. The law was enacted by the Council after overturning a mayoral veto and was challenged by the Bloomberg administration in court in September 2013.
“There is absolutely no contradiction in protecting the public safety of New Yorkers and respecting their civil liberties,” de Blasio said. “In fact, those two priorities must go hand-in-hand. New Yorker should ever face discrimination based on the color of his or her skin.”
Not everyone is pleased about this dismissal by the de Blasio administration, including unions representing police officers – which have filed their own challenge to the law.
“Our opposition to this legislation has been, and continues to be, that it penalizes our members and the public rather than addressing bad policies,” Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch said. “The administration has expressed its desire to change the policies that led to issues in our communities, eliminating the need for the law in the first place. We will continue the litigation to protect our police officers and the city from the effects of this misguided law.”
By Anna Gustafson
