All Black and Latino drivers in Nassau County are the subject of a class-action complaint that alleges that local police show racial prejudice while conducting traffic stops. To guarantee the county implements the improvements, the lawsuit demands $40 million, revisions to county policy, and the appointment of a federal monitor. Later, a judge will decide whether to certify the case as a class action.
The county recently lost millions as a result of a comparable case that was first filed eight years ago in the nearby Suffolk County, which also prompted the county’s police department to enhance training and share better statistics on how it upholds the law.
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The lawsuit’s civil rights attorney, Frederick Brewington, “The potential outcomes would be to force Nassau to stop this discriminatory and race-based policing that’s taking place, particularly with regard to car stops.”
Bruce Blakeman, the county executive, and the police division did not come forth with a statement in responding to the messages. Since many individuals of color travel from New York City to Nassau to perpetrate criminal acts, Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder claimed at a hearing in the year 2022 that his officers stop a disproportionate amount of colored people.
At a previous hearing in November of last year, Ryder stated, “We’re going where we’re being asked to go.” He added, “We spent a lot of time in Green Acres Mall this year because we were getting hit pretty hard, with a lot of larcenies and grand larcenies in the malls.”
This month’s statistics updates on the county website continue to demonstrate how frequently Black and Latino drivers are pulled over, searched, and issued tickets compared to white drivers. Despite making up just 29% of Nassau’s population, Black and Latino persons account for 61% of all arrests, 50% of all traffic stops, 60% of in-person interviews, and 52% of pat-downs, according to police statistics. A white motorist receives 1.3 fines on average for every stop. The average number of fines issued to black and Latino drivers at each stop is two and 2.1, respectively.
https://f6e5f6f279e4ef263f1a17a46ad828b5.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html Tivia Leith, a Black woman, filed the case in November after alleging that Nassau police stopped her and detained her for 11 hours with her baby son but never filed any charges. Leith was given permission by a federal judge to resubmit the claim, this time as a class action.
