By CNN Staff
(CNN) — The New York Police Department’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy violated constitutional rights and must be altered, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit claiming that the city’s police officers routinely stopped minority men, particularly blacks and Latinos, without legal reasons.
Scheindlin said that an outside monitor will be appointed to oversee changes to the policy.
The police department had said that the policy — in which police stopped, questioned and frisked people they considered suspicious — was used to deter crime. The practice is widely criticized.
The lead plaintiff in the case is David Floyd, a medical student who was stopped twice, once in the middle of the afternoon when he was in front of his home in the Bronx, according to the suit, which was filed in 2008.
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