[JURIST] New York City on Monday agreed to settle [text, PDF] a 2010 lawsuit [complaint, PDF] filed against the New York Police Department (NYPD) [official website] for issuing summonses without legal justification. The lawsuit regards [NYT report] approximately 900,000 summonses issued for quality-of-life crimes between 2007 and 2015 that were later dismissed for legal insufficiency. Plaintiffs had accused the NYPD of promoting the issuance of summonses regardless of actual wrongdoing in order to meet quotas. Such a policy was accused of disproportionately affecting minority communities. The city has agreed to pay up to $75 million to settle the lawsuit, with $56.5 million being set aside to compensate affected individuals and the remainder being used for attorneys’ fees. The city has also agreed to issue department-wide notifications reiterating the ban against enforcing quotas. The NYPD is currently in the process of changing its policies regarding how and when summonses are issued. The settlement agreement must now be approved during a final fairness hearing before the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website].

The NYPD previously faced scrutiny for its stop-and-frisk procedures [JURIST backgrounder]. Criticisms against such procedures revolve primarily around the relevant racial issues involved [JURIST op-ed]. Critics claim such procedures are unconstitutional [JURIST op-ed] because they unfairly target minorities, who are disproportionately selected for stops and searches. Other criticisms indicate that the procedure itself is unwieldy and ineffective [JURIST op-ed], emphasizing quantity of searches over their quality and resulting in an unnecessary drain on department time and resources. In 2014 Mayor Bill De Blasio [official website] agreed to settle [JURIST report] a lawsuit against the NYPD for stop-and-frisk procedures after reaching a settlement requiring three years of NYPD oversight by a court-appointed monitor. The mayor announced [JURIST report] his plan to drop the city’s appeal of the lawsuit earlier that year. In November 2013 the court blocked NYPD stop-and-frisk changes. In the period between 2004 and 2011 only 1.5 percent of the 2.3 million searches conducted revealed an illegal weapon. In September 2013 Judge Shira Scheindlin rejected [JURIST report] a motion by the City of New York to stay her order requiring a halt of the stop-and-frisk procedure. Earlier that year the judge granted [JURIST report] class action status to those challenging the procedure.