In a blistering decision issued Monday, the judge, Shira Scheindlin, found that the Police Department had "adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling" that targeted young minority men for stops. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would appeal the ruling, angrily accusing the judge of deliberately not giving the city "a fair trial."
But in her ruling, Scheindlin found that in doing so, the police systematically stopped innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing.