Judge Scheindlin named a monitor — Peter L. Zimroth, a former corporation counsel — to oversee changes in training, supervision, monitoring and discipline. Officers, in effect, will be untrained in the old policy, then trained in new stop-and-frisk procedures. They will be taught about racial profiling and “unconscious racial bias,” and what constitutes a stop and the legal basis for a search. They will learn how to fill out a new stop-and-frisk form, with the current checkboxes replaced by a “narrative section where the officer must record, in her own words, the basis for the stop.” Finally, a facilitator will also be appointed to work with community groups and other “stakeholders” on the reforms.

Court-appointed monitors are nothing new in police departments. Nationally, there have been about two dozen in the past 20 years. And while there is no agreement on the efficiency and effectiveness of these monitors, the one thing that all police chiefs involved agreed with is that the monitoring always lasted longer (some more than 10 years) and was vastly more expensive than expected.

New York’s experience is not likely to be different. The training regimen laid out by Judge Scheindlin will require transferring dozens of officers from precincts and permanently reassigning them to the police academy as trainers. Because minimum staffing levels are required by the department, much of the new training will have to be done on overtime, unless the city spends money to expand the number of officers.

Front-line ranking officers (sergeants and lieutenants) will likely require one week of training, while patrol officers and detectives will require at least two days. My estimate is that this remedial process will cost tens of millions of dollars and last at least 10 years. This does not include the incalculable but sizable costs of taking an officer off patrol for training. Nor does it include the cost of the monitor, staff, expert advisers or the yet-to-be-named facilitator and his or her staff.

The facilitator will hold town hall meetings to receive as much input as possible, particularly from those most affected by police searches. But Britain’s experience, following riots in London in August 2011, offers a cautionary tale. There, community members were asked for their ideas about the underlying problems that caused the disturbances, only to have their hopes for change dashed.