NYPD settles lawsuit over unconstitutional warrant checks

The NYPD has settled a class action suit accusing officers of conducting unconstitutional warrant checks on people they stop on the street without sufficient cause, the Daily News has learned.

In settling the 2019 lawsuit, the city agrees to pay more than $453,000 to the five plaintiffs in Terron Belle et. al. v. the City of New York, as well as update their patrol guide and retrain officers so they don’t unnecessarily detain city residents so they can review the department’s database and see if they have an outstanding arrest warrant or bench warrant filed against them and check if they’re wanted for questioning.

“This lawsuit has always been about bringing justice to innocent New Yorkers who are baselessly detained in the street so aggressive NYPD officers can run their IDs,” said civil rights attorney Cyrus Joubin, who represented Belle and four other plaintiffs with the Legal Aid Society. “Thanks to the five courageous plaintiffs who told their stories and sought to hold the NYPD accountable, we are proud to have not only shed light on the NYPD’s abusive practices using their domain awareness system, but also to have taken a significant step to restrain such abusive practices.”

While cops are permitted to stop and frisk someone they suspect of carrying a gun or drugs, advancements in the NYPD’s handheld technology allows officers the ability to run a person’s name in several databases at the scene to see if they are wanted for additional crimes.

But cops can only stop a person as long as it takes to confirm or dispel their reasonable suspicion. Conducting a warrant check on someone without sufficient cause violates a person’s fourth amendment rights and is just the latest tactic in the NYPD’s long history of unwarranted search and seizure practices, attorneys said.

The lawsuit was filed in 2019 after four plainclothes officers stopped Belle on the street and searched him for weapons. When they didn’t find anything, they demanded his ID and detained him so they could run a warrant check, even though their initial suspicion — that he had a gun — had been disproven.

“In a free country, you shouldn’t have to give officers your ID for them to run a warrant check just because you’re standing on the sidewalk,” said plaintiff Edison Quito. “I joined the case to try to challenge the NYPD’s illegal practice and I am proud of the result.”

Belle said hoped the settlement “will keep what happened to me from happening to other people.”

“I was treated like a criminal and held against my will so that they could run a warrant check on me when I had done nothing wrong,” he said.

In settling the lawsuit, the NYPD admitted no liability but agreed to the reforms. At every roll call for the last week, cops have been reminded not to detain people to conduct warrant checks without cause. Officers will be retrained on the updated policies and can face internal discipline if they violate them, the settlement notes.

“For years, the NYPD maintained an unconstitutional practice of prolonging stops to run warrant and I-card searches, turning each of these stops into an unrelated fishing expedition and subjecting our clients to harassment by police,” said Molly Griffard, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at The Legal Aid Society. “This settlement marks a change in the NYPD’s official policy and holds the NYPD accountable for infringing on the rights of New Yorkers.”

Emails to the NYPD and the city Law Department for comment were not immediately returned.