Hard on the heels of the New York Times article about how the City is fighting lawsuits against the New York Police Department, comes this, from the Daily News: Victim of illegal stop-and-frisk gets $14G settlement from city after his NYPD manhandling is caught on tape – NY Daily News.
It’s not as hypocritical or contradictory as it sounds. The City’s Law Department is apparently carefully evaluating each case on its merits. In this matter, there was a surveillance tape of the stop-and-frisk that supported (to a degree) the victim’s story and contradicted the police story.
The video, which showed the cop pushing St. Hillaire [the victim] against a building, even prompted a city lawyer to conceded in January that there appeared to be no legal basis for the stop.
The cop who did the stop-and-frisk has been sued several times previously—and the City has had to settle five of those cases since 2010.
As the Daily News piece (by John Marzulli) says: “Clarke [the cop] might need a tutorial on constitutional law.”