...It’s often said that police agencies will function properly if they remove a few “bad apples,” said Patel, who served as trial counsel in 2012 for the Center for Constitutional Rights’ class-action lawsuit challenging the New York City Police Department’s use of “stop-and-frisk,” which a federal court judge deemed unconstitutional. “This is the purpose of this kind of inquiry, to really investigate whether the entire barrel is rotten. The bad apples are often indicative of a larger culture of a racist policing or a culture of permitting racialized policing.” ...

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