The officers who veered in front of a dirt-bike rider trying to evade police — a maneuver that ended with the rider dead — violated NYPD guidelines designed to ensure police car chases don’t result in catastrophe, officials have confirmed.
The alleged violations emerged in a report released this week by Attorney General Letitia James on the 2023 death of Samuel Williams, who died after colliding with an unmarked vehicle driven by cops trying to block a group riding illegal dirt bikes and ATVs across the University Heights Bridge from Manhattan to The Bronx.
The attorney general concluded that, while the officers broke departmental rules, their actions did not rise to the level of criminal culpability. As a result, she filed no charges.
James’ report came as a judge ordered the NYPD to release body camera footage and documents from the incident to The City Reporter amid a long-running Freedom of Information lawsuit. A lawyer for Williams’ family blasted the attorney general’s decision not to file charges.
Cops Versus Bikers
As described by the attorney general’s Office of Special Investigation, the May 28, 2023, accident occurred when a caravan of four unmarked police vehicles carrying Community Response Team (CRT) cops saw a group of dirt bikes and ATVs — which are illegal on New York City streets — approaching the University Heights Bridge connecting The Bronx and Manhattan.
Williams, the leader of the group, was popping wheelies as he headed toward the NYPD caravan. The second car in the cop caravan pulled into the oncoming lane to block the riders, and a third cop car behind him did the same.
State investigators determined that Williams was able to swerve around the first police car trying to block him and appeared to be accelerating to try and dodge the second when he crashed into it. He was launched through the air and landed on the street, his leg badly broken. He died the next day; Williams’ death was ruled “accidental,” caused by “blunt injuries” to his legs and damaged blood vessels.
The AG’s report noted that the NYPD’s written policies on vehicle pursuits specifically prohibited members of service from “placing a moving department vehicle in a position to be struck by the pursued vehicle.”
The NYPD had thousands of mopeds, scooters and motorcycles impounded at its Red Hook, Brooklyn facility, July 14, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The report also revealed that the NYPD had determined that the actions of Officer Raymond Perez, the cop who steered the vehicle in front of Williams that caused the crash, “were outside department guidelines.” The report did not reveal the specific violation.
A federal lawsuit filed by Williams’ family asserts that the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division (FID) “concluded, at least in part, Perez violated NYPD guidelines.” The suit asserts that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “approved those findings” and it claims Perez “was subsequently disciplined.”
The department has for more than a year blocked The City Reporter’s public records request seeking the investigation’s closing memo. Last week, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, a judge ordered the NYPD to turn over the memo to The City Reporter within the next 90 days.
The NYPD did not respond toquestions about the internal investigation’s finding or whether Perez or Officer Hermes Rodriguez, the other cop who steered his car into oncoming traffic to block Williams, had been disciplined.
The attorney general’s report noted that in February 2025, newly appointed Commissioner Tisch tightened the guidelines even further, barring vehicle pursuits of drivers officers either witnessed or suspected of committing traffic infractions, violations or non-violent misdemeanors.
The AG determined that under those new guidelines, the cops would have had no justification to even pursue Williams, who was riding an illegal dirt bike without a license plate on a city street, because the infraction they witnessed, reckless driving, was a non-violent misdemeanor.
“The actions of the officers who drove the second and third CRT cars across the bridge on May 28, 2023, and into oncoming traffic were deeply troubling,” the attorney general’s office found. “Those actions presented a clear risk to life and limb, and in fact they caused the death of Samuel Williams.”
The AG also “found no evidence that NYPD ever permitted such maneuvers in such circumstances, nor that it ever trained its officers to perform them.”
At least some members of the Community Response Team had embraced the tactic of veering into oncoming traffic to block illegal dirt bikes and ATVs, despite the fact that it violated NYPD guidelines, the report found.
The team’s supervisor, Lt. Vicente Perez, who was in the car behind Perez’s, told the AG’s investigators that his team had used this tactic “successfully” in the past. He also conceded that “officers were not trained by NYPD to do this maneuver.”
Lawyer: Findings ‘Enough’ for Charges
On Tuesday, Williams’ family’s attorney, Jaime Santana, castigated the attorney general for failing to charge any of the cops: “Samuel Williams died on a bridge in The Bronx because NYPD officers performed an illegal, untrained maneuver that their own department never authorized. The Attorney General spent three years investigating this — and today told this family that’s not enough. It is enough. It was always enough.”
The CRT came into being in early 2022 after then-Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, announced his plans to crack down on the wave of illegal dirt bikes and ATVs terrorizing motorists and pedestrians.
The team quickly expanded and began sending out caravans of cops in unmarked sedans to hunt for and shut down these cowboy convoys. A July 2023 examination of 911 data by The City Reporter found that by the summer of 2023, the number of NYPD vehicle pursuits had spiked by 600%, and within a year the attorney general had opened investigations into six fatal CRT-related crashes.
A November 2024 report by the city Office of Inspector General overseeing the NYPD criticized the department’s oversight, finding that “CRT has no written policies and procedures to guide its actions, and no list of specific CRT training required for officers within CRT.”
The inspector general warned that this “lack of transparency with respect to documented policies and procedures for this specialized unit elevates the risk of non-compliance with the law, ethical breaches, and negative policing outcomes.”
Following the death of Williams, the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), substantiated the allegation that Officer Perez had violated use of force protocols by veering into Williams and recommended a penalty known as “charges,” the most serious sanction available. But the CCRB is barred from discussing the case and the discipline it recommended because Perez’s case is pending in the NYPD’s internal disciplinary system.
Three years after the incident, no administrative trial date has been set.
State Attorney General Letitia James’ office said there was insufficient evidence to charge officers involved in the 2023 death of Samuel Williams on the University Heights Bridge. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Since the collision on the University Heights Bridge, Perez has been the subject of seven more CCRB complaints. They include a November 2024 incident in which Perez was found to have performed an unauthorized search of a vehicle, and a May 2024 encounter where CCRB substantiated allegations that Perez failed to provide his business card to the subject of a stop and frisk who requested one.
While Perez remains assigned to a CRT unit, Officer Rodriguez — the other officer who pulled in front of Williams — was forced to resign after he was charged criminally by the Manhattan District Attorney in August 2024.
DA Alvin Bragg alleged that, two weeks after the incident on the University Heights Bridge, Rodriguez was involved in what appears to have been a CRT vehicle stop in Upper Manhattan. Prosecutors say Rodriguez used a baton to beat the driver and to break the car’s front and rear windshields. The incident was captured by a body-worn camera, and Rodriquez pleaded guilty to three charges, including third-degree assault.
He later participated in 12 anger management sessions, performed eight days of community services and paid $1,190 in restitution. He is barred from reapplying to be a police officer anywhere in New York state.
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