Judge Scheindlin Stops and Frisks N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s historic ruling that the New York City Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics are unconstitutional has many implications—for policing, for civil rights, and for the daily lives of New Yorkers, particularly the minority youths in high-crime areas who have been the focus of the police’s attention. But one of the most immediate effects will be on the city’s mayoral race, in which the all-important Democratic primary is just four weeks away. All at once, the explosive issues of crime and race have been lobbed into a contest that hitherto had been dominated by Anthony Wiener’s unwholesome proclivities.

In an augur of what is doubtless to come, George McDonald, one of the Republican candidates, said on Twitter, “One misguided liberal judge is endangering the safety of all New Yorkers. Appeal, Appeal, Appeal!” Mayor Bloomberg, in his press conference, vowed to do just that, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He argued that Scheindlin’s ruling ignored legal precedent and the fact that the stop-and-frisk program had saved “countless lives,” adding: “She ignored the real-world reality of crime.”

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