Bloomberg sues council over 'stop-and-frisk'

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has sued the New York City Council in a bid to overturn a law aimed at curbing the police department's use of its controversial stop-and-frisk policy, reported Reuters.

The council passed the measure in the wake a federal court decision banning the city's tactics, along with another bill creating an independent watchdog to monitor the New York Police Department, overriding the mayor's veto despite his warnings that the legislation would threaten public safety.

The council's votes came less than two weeks after a federal judge ruled that the department's stop-and-frisk policy, under which officers stop people in high-crime areas they suspect of engaging in criminal activity, is unconstitutional because it targets minorities disproportionately.

The bill that prompted Bloomberg's lawsuit expanded the definition of racial profiling and gives New Yorkers who believe they were targeted the right to sue police in state court.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, asserted that the bill was invalid because it is superseded by the state's criminal procedure law which governs the standards and procedures that police officers must follow.

The city has also appealed the federal ruling on stop-and-frisk from U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin, who called the strategy "indirect racial profiling" and appointed a monitor to oversee reforms to the street stops. The monitor, former chief city attorney Peter Zimroth, will work separately from the NYPD inspector general.

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