In ruling on two class-action lawsuits last week, federal Judge Shira Scheindlin blasted the New York City Police Department’s rampant use of stop-and-frisk tactics as unconstitutional and appointed a federal monitor to oversee reform efforts — a move that several Bronx lawmakers supported and the mayor vehemently opposed.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. called the ruling “a welcome step in the right direction,” adding that while “stop-and- frisk can be an effective tool in reducing crime, it is not in its current form — which more often than not violates the constitutional rights of those stopped.”

State Senator Gustavo Rivera said he hoped “the ruling will put an end to the discriminatory practices that have disproportionately violated the constitutional rights of thousands of minorities in New York.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, addressed the victims, most of whom are minorities, directly, saying they “have become central players in cleaning up the program.”

According to the NYCLU, the NYPD stopped and interrogated people 532,911 times in 2012, a 448 percent increase in street stops made during 2002. Nine out of 10 people stopped were not charged with any wrongdoing, and about 87 percent were African-American or Latino. White people accounted for about 10 percent of stops.

During this same time, the city has enjoyed a significant drop in violent crime.

While this ruling has garnered countless supporters, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly strongly oppose it.

Following the ruling, Bloomberg held a conference at City Hall, where he said Scheindlin “conveyed a disturbing disregard for the good intentions of our police officers, who put their lives on the line for us every single day.”

Bloomberg vowed to appeal the ruling.

“If this decision were to stand,” Bloomberg said the drop in violent crime could be reversed and would ultimately “make our city, and in fact the whole country, a more dangerous place.”

Kelly, also present, shot down the accusations that the NYPD has been racially profiling New Yorkers, calling them “disturbing and offensive” and reminded residents that the NYPD is the most racially and ethnically diverse police department in the world.

Currently, the New York City Council is considering overriding a mayoral veto of the Community Safety Act, a bill that would create an Inspector General for the NYPD and allow victims of stop-and-frisk to charge police for racial profiling.

If the Inspector General role is created and Scheindlin’s appointment of independent monitor Peter Zimroth, a former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, holds up, the NYPD will have two outsiders monitoring its policies and activities. Before this summer, there were none.

William Cannon, a criminal justice professor at Monroe College who is also a 27-year veteran of the NYPD, has mixed feelings on stop-and-frisk tactics. He called the NYPD’s policy “a good one” because he said it has resulted in huge decreases in crime. But he said the NYPD erred when it began pushing stop-and-frisk as a required activity.

Cannon, who feared the decision would embolden people to carry guns on the street, said the make-up of those stopped was “consistent with the people who are appearing on the crime reports. The reason why they are targeting young black and Hispanic people is because they show up on the crime reports.”

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Aug. 22-Sept. 4 print edition of the Norwood News.