New York City’s reliance on the tactic known as “stop and frisk” as part of a new initiative to combat gun violence is harming communities of color and running afoul of the law, a court-appointed federal monitor reported Monday.
Monitor Mylan Denerstein said the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) Neighborhood Safety Teams — special units deployed in the past 14 months to seize guns in high-crime areas — were engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by stopping and frisking too many people without justification.
In one police precinct, only 41 percent of stops, 32 percent of frisks and 26 percent of searches were lawful, Denerstein said.
Photo: AP
The Neighborhood Safety Teams, a replacement for the anti-crime units that the NYPD disbanded in 2021, operate in 34 areas that account for 80 percent of the city’s violent crime — largely communities of color.
Of the people the teams have stopped, 97 percent are black or Hispanic, Denerstein said.
A spokesman for New York City Mayor Eric Adams said city officials “have serious concerns” with Denerstein’s methodology and that they only learned of her findings after news outlets reported on them.
The spokesman, Fabien Levy, said shootings have fallen since the Neighborhood Safety Teams were created.
Officers assigned to the units “have enhanced training and oversight to ensure we are not only keeping New Yorkers safe, but protecting their civil liberties as well,” Levy said, adding that “any unconstitutional stop is unacceptable, and we will strive to do better for New Yorkers every day.”
Denerstein said she began her review after Adams announced in March last year that the NYPD was deploying Neighborhood Safety Teams in some precincts to combat gun violence.
Team members, wearing modified uniforms and driving unmarked vehicles, conduct stops, frisks and searches in their assigned neighborhoods.
“Unfortunately, the results are disappointing,” Denerstein wrote.
Despite their training and experience, officers assigned to Neighborhood Safety Teams “overall appear to be stopping, frisking and searching individuals at an unsatisfactory level of compliance. Too many people are stopped, frisked and searched unlawfully.”
In 2013, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD had violated the civil rights of black and Hispanic New Yorkers with stop and frisk, which was part of an effort to get guns and drugs off the street by frequently stopping and searching people on the street.
US District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled the stops were a form of indirect racial profiling.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a champion of the tactic, has since apologized for its use.
Since the ruling, the department claimed a sharp drop in stops, reporting an average of about 11,730 per year from 2016 to last year, compared with a high of nearly 686,000 stops in 2011.
Black and Hispanic people continue to be the targets of the vast majority of stops, accounting for 89 percent of all stops last year, according to NYPD data compiled by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
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