The New York Civil Liberties Union said in the suit such practices are racially biased and unconstitutional and said most of those stopped and recorded had not committed crimes, resulting in a name and address database of law-abiding citizens.

In 2007 the NYPD stopped about 469,000 New Yorkers, the civil rights groups said. More than half were black, 30 per cent were of Latino descent and most were engaged in lawful activities, the group said.

The suit named as the sole plaintiff a black New York Post reporter who said he was aggressively stopped while walking down a street, arrested and handcuffed and placed in a cell. He was later released after police learned he was a reporter with a Colombia University degree, the suit said.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said police acted professionally in arresting the reporter after he denied speaking English and then refused to identify himself to two police officers, who were black and Hispanic.

Mr Browne called the racial bias charges 'untrue' and said people were stopped in patterns that paralleled crimes.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, is the latest in a series of disputes between police and civil liberties groups over how minority groups are treated by police.

Rights groups angrily demonstrated after three New York City police detectives were recently acquitted in the killing of an unarmed black man in a hail of 50 bullets. -- REUTERS