Crime & Safety
NYPD Settles Suit on Livery Cab Searches
A Brooklyn radio executive brought forth a suit against the police department, alleging he was searched without justification.
The NYPD will better train officers in the ways that they may legally order livery passengers out of cabs and search them, says the New York Times.
According to the article, Bed-Stuy resident and radio executive Terrence Battle, along with Munir Pujara, a lawyer from Harlem, filed the suit alleging that they had been pulled out of cabs by police officers without justification.
The Taxi/Livery Robbery Inspection Program – TRIP – allows drivers who display a window decal to be stopped by the police in order to check on their safety, says the article, though according to the suit, officers were using the decal as license to remove and search passengers.
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NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told the Times that the department would “continue to inform and train uniformed members as to when it is appropriate under the law to remove passengers from liveries during TRIP stops.”
A spokesperson for the New York Civil Liberties Union added to the Times that the NYPD “recognized that this was a departmentwide problem that had to be fixed.”
