In speaking before the American Bar Association's House of Delegates, Holder asserts that changes will target handing down more appropriate sentencing for offenders that do not have ties or affiliations with any Large-Scale Organizations, Gangs, or Cartels. Also citing the rising cost of housing the ridiculously fast rising number of citizens incarcerated, Holder very surprisingly has the support of some unlikely members of Congress-including Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul.
We will keep an eye on this one..
For those unfamiliar with the policy, Stop and Frisk allows New York Police Officers the right to Detain & Search any citizen reasonably deemed to be exhibiting "suspicious" behavior. The Policy is a major part of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Crime initiatives; but statistics show that the policy has been unfairly used to target minorities.
Judge Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go. The decision went on to say that the NYPD “adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data.” The judge also rejected the city’s arguments that more stops happened in minority neighborhoods solely because those happened to have high-crime rates. As part of the decision, it has been found that more than 200,000, of the more than 5 million recorded stops, were made without reasonable cause for suspicion.
To be clear, however, today's decision does not end this policy. The courts have simply ruled that the policy will have to undergo changes to how it's implemented; and will have a third-party review board overseeing the way the law is executed going forward. Stay tuned...