Federal court to consider legality of NYPD's "stop and frisk"

The controversial stop-and-frisk technique used on hundreds of thousands of minorities in New York City could soon be brought before a federal judge to decide on the constitutionality of the NYPD’s popular practice.

A federal lawsuit filed against the New York Police Department all the way back in 2008 has cleared some serious legal hurdles, the UK’s Guardian reports, and now it look as though the court will consider if the NYPD can continue to stop people on the streets of the Big Apple and subject them to random searches can continue.

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy has come under major scrutiny for the last decade, but a recent analysis of statistics related to the searches suggest that not only has the practice not necessarily led to a decrease in crime, but that in the vast majority of cases police officers are singling out minorities, often searching them on a suspicion and ending up unable to find a reason to charge them with a crime.