In the second week of the landmark Floyd v. City of New York trial, witness testimony has revealed more indicting details about the NYPD's stop-and-frisk practices. Appearing on the stand Wednesday, police officer Brian Dennis testified that he had taunted a 13-year-old boy after he detained him. Dennis told the handcuffed child, Devin Almonor, to "stop crying like a little girl."
The teen was reportedly stopped on the street in Harlem when he reached into his pants' waistband. The two officers that stopped him claimed to have been searching for a firearm, but Almonor was found to be carrying no weapons. He was nonetheless handcuffed, taunted and taken to the stationhouse.
Meanwhile, as Ryan Devereaux reported for the Guardian, an internal NYPD memo sent to commanding officers earlier this month "amounts to an admission that the [stop-and-frisk] program is deeply flawed. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the class action lawsuit against the city, objected to the memo being entered into evidence. The group argued that civil rights groups have been pushing for police to issue such directives for years; the release of such a memo on the eve of the landmark trial has thus raised some eyebrows. Via Devereaux:
The memo, which the NYPD attempted to enter into evidence in a civil suit on Wednesday, was sent to commanding officers earlier this month and requires all police officers making a stop to give detailed reasons for their actions.
One of the plaintiffs in the case, the Center for Constitutional Rights, objected to the memo being recorded. Darius Charney, an attorney with the CCR, said city lawyers had only made the document available on Tuesday night.
"The memo literally says what we've been asking for for 10 years," Charney told reporters outside the courthouse on Wednesday afternoon. "Now as we prepare to go to trial this memo magically appears."
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