Report: Special anti-crime NYPD units fail to meet goals of making lawful stop and frisks

Anti-crime units of the NYPD have failed to meet goals on making lawful stop and frisks and have done worse than regular patrol units despite receiving considerable training, a special federal court monitor concluded in a report.

The latest findings on problems with police handling of stop and frisks — which included recent decreases in lawful stops and frisks by the specialized units — occurred even though NYPD officials have long known about the shortcomings but failed to fully audit the activities, the report stated.

"The Department is well aware of the compliance issues it faces," court monitor Mylan L. Denerstein said in a statement accompanying her latest report on NYPD progress in remedying problems with stop-and-frisk activity. "It is time for the Department to take ownership of its issue and solve them."

Stop and frisk is a practice in which police are permitted to stop and question a person if they have reasonable cause to believe the person was engaged in or may have been engaged in criminality.

A landmark 2013 federal court ruling found that the department's practices were unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.

Denerstein’s report covers three specialized units initiated under the tenure of former Mayor Eric Adams: Neighborhood Safety Teams, Public Safety Teams and Community Response Teams, the latter mainly responsible for taking illegal guns off the streets.

Based on random studies of some stop and frisks and police body camera videos examined by her staff, Denerstein found in essence that all three units recently failed to reach her directed goal of having 90% of their stops and frisks done lawfully by the end of last year. For all of 2025, the three anti-crime units had combined compliance rates of 83.4% for stops, 65.5% for frisks and 61.7% for searches stemming from the stops, according to the report.

Regular patrol units were found in the survey to have lawful stop rates of 94%, 83% for frisks and 79% for searches.

Chris Herrmann, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies policing, said the specialized units handle more challenging stops in higher-crime areas. Those units target repeat offenders and have been more aggressive during stops, Herrmann believes.

Denerstein, a former federal prosecutor and now a private attorney, was appointed as special stop-and-frisk monitor in 2022 as a result of the 2013 court finding. The ruling called for remedial measures by the department to be supervised by a monitor.

From a peak of around 685,000 stops in 2011, the number has dropped to about 30,000 a year, officials said. The proportion of stops involving minorities has reportedly still generally hovered around 80% in the years since the court ruling.

In response to the monitor’s report, NYPD spokesman Brad Weekes said the department was continuing a collaboration with Denerstein but acknowledges there is still work to be done on complying with the law. One tactic, Weekes said, involves the use of the "compliance stat" program, by which precinct and unit commanders are brought in to go over problems with stop-and-frisk activities.

To hold the NYPD more accountable, Denerstein said she was keeping in place the 90% compliance standard for specialized units through the rest of the year.

"This is achievable," Denerstein said.