This landmark Supreme Court case set the foundation for future cases involving stops and seizures and set the precedent for how lower courts were to handle them. Over the next thirty or so years, Criminal Procedure Law 140.50 governed stop-and-frisk procedures for law enforcement agencies. Police officers had the right to stop individuals and inquire, but had to have a reason sufficient enough, in court, to justify the action. This broad discretion gave law enforcement a wider-range of power and with that, the responsibility to uphold more than just personal prejudices and agendas; the law. Many officers would see this development as a loophole to legally stop everyday citizens whom they thought to be suspicious enough to warrant further questioning and law enforcement in America would begin down the slippery slope of racially motivated methods of preventing crime.
There is no blatant abuse of power by law enforcement exposed by the media until the shooting of Amadou Diallo on February 4, 1999. Diallo was a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea and was killed by four New York Police Department off-duty officers. The officers fired 41 bullets and 19 hit Diallo outside of his apartment in The Bronx because, according to the officers, Diallo matched the description of an armed serial rapist who had been involved in the rape of 29 victims. Diallo was unarmed, but reached for his wallet and triggered the officers to open fire. The officers were acquitted at trial as they were apparently following NYPD procedure. Controversies over police brutality and racial profiling were finally brought to light after the event as the circumstances of the shooting incited outrage across the United States. A class-action lawsuit was filed against New York City for what plaintiffs called "unlawful stop and frisk practices and racial profiling by police officers". The plaintiffs also sought for the removal of the NYPD Street Crimes Unit, the unit that the four officers who killed Diallo were in.
