Milbank litigators secured the certification of an injunctive relief class in an Eastern District of New York lawsuit against Suffolk County, the Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD), and various supervisors and current and former officers, asserting claims of widespread, systematic discriminatory policing of Latinos.
On April 5, Judge William F. Kuntz, II ordered the certification of an injunctive relief class and the appointment of LatinoJustice and Milbank as class counsel after adopting in its entirety Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom’s Report and Recommendation.
Certification of an injunctive relief class is an important step toward plaintiffs’ goal of compelling Suffolk County to take proactive steps to implement policies, training, supervisory and disciplinary systems, and to conduct adequate investigations into allegations of biased policing, all of which are critical to addressing the SCPD’s discriminatory and unconstitutional policing practices.
The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2015 after the US Department of Justice had concluded a five-year investigation into the SCPD resulting from the November 2008 hate-crime attack and murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant, near the Patchogue Long Island Railroad station. In January 2014, Suffolk County entered into an agreement with the DOJ to overhaul and reform its training and policing practices, and to undertake data systems review protocols to monitor compliance. Shortly after, former SCPD Sergeant Scott Greene was arrested in an undercover sting operation after years of systematic racial profiling and “stopping and robbing” Latino motorists.
In 2018, Milbank took over the case as pro bono lead counsel and spent nearly two years fighting defendants for key discovery. Ultimately, defendants were compelled to produce over 35,000 documents, including documentation of biased policing complaints and complaint review policies that defendants’ own police practices expert conceded failed to comply with best practices.
Plaintiffs also engaged police practices expert Robert Stewart and traffic stop data expert Dr. Michael Smith. Although defendants’ traffic-stop data collection practices were consistently inadequate, using the limited and error-ridden data available Dr. Smith found that statistically significant, higher percentages of Latino motorists were arrested and ticketed compared to white motorists, and lower percentages were warned or released with no further action taken—findings that are “consistent with ethnicity-based enforcement.” After this prolonged discovery, plaintiffs moved for class certification in May 2020.
On March 12, Judge Bloom issued her 38-page Report and Recommendation. Judge Bloom observed that plaintiffs had set forth a “voluminous record regarding department-wide policy failures,” and that defendants’ failure to collect adequate traffic data years after entering into the DOJ agreement was no defense to certification.
Judge Bloom also rejected defendants’ argument that Scott Greene was merely one bad apple: “Giving the SCPD the most generous benefit of the doubt, it challenges credulity no one in the SCPD had an inkling or a suspicion of Greene’s activities. The egregious nature of his conduct and the fact that his actions persisted with impunity for years is shameful, especially because when complaints were made, had they been promptly and properly investigated, Greene would have been stopped.”
Judge Bloom went on to reject defendants’ argument that the DOJ’s lack of an enforcement action under its separate agreement with SCPD established the absence of other biased policies: “As plaintiffs point out: ‘[t]he Agreement, to which Plaintiffs are not a party, is not a litmus test for constitutional policing.’”
Judge Bloom also recommended appointing LatinoJustice and Milbank as class counsel, noting that “Plaintiffs are in excellent hands.”
The Milbank team is optimistic that Judge Kuntz’s adoption of Judge Bloom’s Report and Recommendation, in which Judge Bloom detailed and credited the expansive record of evidence presented by plaintiffs, is a positive sign that the Court will deny defendants’ pending motion for summary judgment.
The Milbank team representing plaintiffs is led by Litigation partners Scott Edelman and Atara Miller, and special counsel Mark Villaverde, along with Litigation associates Alex Paslawsky, David Marcou, Mike Mirdamadi, Sam Lovin, Maria Ortiz, Griselda Cabrera, Jordan Fernandes, Elvira Razzano, Lacey Reimer, Alicia Badley and Bradley Hershon, as well as new team members Isabel Pitaro and Lyndsey Pere. Jacob Jou and Jeremy Butt also assisted with the motion for class certification.
