This article was produced in partnership with New York Focus.
The number of stop-and-frisks performed by NYPD officers sharply increased last year, public data analyzed by New York Focus and THE CITY reveals.
In 2024, officers recorded 25,386 stops, a 50 percent increase over the previous year and the highest number since 2014. Nearly nine in ten people stopped by the NYPD last year were Black or Latino.
Over 15,600 people were frisked during stops, a 43 percent increase over the previous year.
The spike came despite new practices adopted in January 2024 to curb unlawful stops, including trainings, audits and reviews of body-worn camera footage.
In response to a request for comment, the mayor’s office referred New York Focus and THE CITY to the NYPD’s press office, which did not respond to an inquiry.
Stop-and-frisks — otherwise known as Terry stops — refer to the police practice of stopping and patting down the outer clothing of individuals cops suspect to be armed and dangerous. During these stops, police may also search individuals’ belongings.
Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYPD officers stopped hundreds of thousands of individuals each year and conducted a record-high 685,724 stops in 2011. Few stops resulted in arrests, and the practice disproportionately targeted Black and Latino individuals.
NYPD stops sharply decreased in the following years. In 2013, a New York federal judge ruled that the practice was ineffectual and, as implemented under Bloomberg, violated the constitutional rights of minorities. By 2021 — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final year in office — NYPD officers conducted just 8,947 stops.
Three years later, that number has nearly tripled under the Adams administration.
Since Adams took office in 2022, stop-and-frisk incidents have risen each year and continued to disproportionately target people of color. NYPD officers recorded more than 15,000 stops in both 2022 and 2023.
A notorious “anti-crime” plainclothes unit resurrected by Adams may have contributed to those increases.
In a report released last month, attorney Mylan Denerstein, the court-appointed federal monitor, found that two specialized NYPD units — the Neighborhood Safety Team and the Public Safety Team — were responsible for a majority of unlawful stop-and-frisks in the first half of 2023.
A previous version of the Neighborhood Safety Team was disbanded in 2020 after years of controversy surrounding its aggressive tactics. During his mayoral campaign, Adams pledged to bring the unit back amid heightened public concern over shootings.
The Bronx has been disproportionately affected by the police tactic, with nearly four in ten stops occurring there last year. The borough is home to only 17 percent of the city’s population, and over 80 percent of Bronx residents are Black or Latino.
Under Adams, police have increasingly initiated stops on their own rather than responding to 911 or 311 calls. Self-initiated stops more than doubled from about 23 percent in de Blasio’s final year to 51 percent last year.
According to Denerstein’s report, NST and PST overwhelmingly conducted self-initiated stops, while patrol officers often conducted stops based on radio runs or calls for service. Self-initiated stops were the most likely to be unconstitutional, she found. She wrote that the two specialized units needed to be “better supervised.”
Denerstein has also found that officers frequently underreport stop-and-frisks. Her team’s audits of police encounters suggest that in 2024, officers failed to report four in ten stops.
Unconstitutional frisks and searches have risen in recent years. According to Denerstein’s letter, just under a third of searches and frisks in the first half of 2024 were unconstitutional.
NYPD leadership created a new procedure called “ComplianceStat” in January 2024 to increase higher ups’ accountability for their officers’ conduct during stops. That may have resulted in more officers reporting stops in 2024, though any measures to decrease the number of stops appear to have been ineffective. Reported stops remained relatively consistent across 2024, with slight dips in June and December.
Complaints about misconduct during NYPD stops have also risen in recent years. Last year, the NYPD closed 42 cases of stop-and-frisk misconduct substantiated by the Civilian Review Complaint Board, claiming that the watchdog agency had filed the complaints too late. The agency maintains that it filed them two months before the statute of limitations.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has led the department since November, told the City Council last month that she would implement stricter measures against officers who violate policy while conducting stop-and-frisks.
Her promise came after Denerstein gave the NYPD a deadline. In February, the monitor demanded stop-and-frisk compliance levels of at least 85 percent by September and 90 percent by the end of the year, threatening to recommend “further action” otherwise.
“We are tired of monitoring the NYPD,” Denerstein wrote. “It has been eleven years.”
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