Why Didn't the NYPD Fix Stop-and-Frisk Earlier?

There is much that is extraordinary about Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s decision in Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. The 198-page ruling, issued Monday morning, effectively dismantles the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy as it currently stands. Scheindlin rips apart the “NYPD’s practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion,” appoints an independent monitor to help the department reform the policy and bring it in line with the law, and generally validates the notion that stop-and-frisk has been a colossal infringement on citizens’ civil rights. But even considering the sweeping language in her decision, the most extraordinary thing about Scheindlin’s ruling is the fact that it exists at all—that the NYPD didn’t see fit to reform itself in the face of such obvious abuses.