NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration filed court papers Thursday seeking to drop an appeal of a judge’s decision ordering major reforms to the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy.

The papers filed in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the city was seeking to return the case to a lower court for 45 days “for the purpose of exploring a full resolution.”

De Blasio said the city has agreed to the appointment of a monitor for three years to oversee the creation of reforms aimed at ending discrimination. The monitor will oversee a process in which those communities most affected by the stop-and-frisk tactics will provide input on the reforms.

The mayor said the move is a major step in resolving a years-long battle over the policy.

“We are doing it through a collective commitment to fix the fundamental problems that enabled stop-and-frisk to grow out of control and violate the rights of innocent New Yorkers,” de Blasio said.

”Mayor

A judge ruled last year that the New York Police Department had discriminated against blacks and Hispanics with how it went about stopping, questioning and sometimes frisking people on the street. The judge ordered major reforms to the department’s implementation of the policy.

Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed the decision. But de Blasio, who took office at the beginning of the year, is now seeking to drop the appeal.

Bloomberg was a staunch advocate of the policy. Stops had soared to more than 5 million over the past decade, mostly of black and Hispanic men. About 10 percent of the stops resulted in arrests or summonses, and weapons were found about 2 percent of the time.

Four men sued the department in 2008, saying they were unfairly targeted because of their race. U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin presided over a 10-week bench trial where she heard testimony from a dozen New Yorkers who said they were wrongly stopped. She agreed and imposed a court-appointed monitor to oversee reforms, but her ruling has been on hold pending the appeal.

The federal appeals court also took the unusual step of removing Scheindlin from the case, saying she misapplied a related ruling that allowed her to take it to begin with and had spoken inappropriately about the case in public.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Jonathan Moore said the city’s decision to drop the appeal “vindicates the findings by Judge Scheindlin and provides the opportunity for the NYPD to reform policies and practices that the district court found unconstitutional.”