Two years after New York Mayor Eric Adams ordered the Police Department to reinstate specialized units focused on removing firearms from the streets, a court-appointed monitor has found that the squads are stopping, frisking, and searching too many people in violation of the law. The monitor, Mylan Denerstein, filed a report in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday showing that the units, the Neighborhood Safety Teams and Public Safety Teams, were responsible for about 54% of the unlawful stops reported by the Police Department in the first half of 2023, The New York Times reports. The department as a whole is still conducting too many stops, frisks and searches that violate the law, the monitor found, and the numbers are increasing. The monitor has highlighted the trend at least twice before, but it persists. This week’s 54-page report comes over a decade after the department’s use of stop and frisk was deemed unconstitutional by a federal court and an independent monitor was appointed to oversee changes.
The department is still struggling to carry out court-mandated reforms, according to Denerstein. And since Adams, a former police captain, took office in 2022, critics have denounced what they call a return to aggressive policing tactics aimed at Black and Latino men. In a statement, the Police Department said it was “committed to working collaboratively with the monitor to address the areas of concern raised in this latest report.” In 2022, a review of body-camera footage found that police officers did not report about 31% of incidents in which they stopped and searched someone without making an arrest. That’s an increase from about 11% of such stops that went unreported two years before. It's important to note that the data, gathered at various times from 2020 to 2023, is not complete, the monitor said. The monitor said that the Police Department had instituted new training programs and made “significant changes” to policies, like requiring body cameras and auditing procedures. However, she added, “compliance entails more,” and “the department must focus on proper supervision of officers so that stop-and-frisk practices are in accordance with the law.”
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