NYPD has made more than 1 million traffic stops since Mayor Adams took office: Report

The NYPD has made more than 1 million traffic stops since Mayor Eric Adams took office last year – and a disproportionate number of the drivers stopped have been Black or Latino, according to a new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Of drivers stopped, 62% were given summonses and 2% were arrested. The vast majority of people arrested— nearly 90% — were Black or Latino, the report said.

Adams, a former police captain who vowed to reform the NYPD from within, has made equity a core tenet of his administration. But Black New Yorkers — who account for about 22% of the city’s drivers — made up 32% of vehicle stops, according to the NYCLU analysis shared with Gothamist. White New Yorkers make up 40% of drivers, but accounted for just 25% of traffic stops.

Drivers in the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhoods of the Fordham, Highbridge and Morrisania sections in the Bronx were more likely to be searched and arrested than drivers in any other neighborhood, according to the data.

Officers are disproportionately stopping Black and Latino drivers despite the fact that officers who police these neighborhoods are themselves predominantly Black, Latino or Asian, according to NYPD data. For more than a decade, minority officers have been the majority in the NYPD. The police department, now led by its first Puerto Rican commissioner, also boasts a top brass of largely Black and Latino officials.

“The outcomes of interactions with police officers demonstrate stark racial disparities,” said Ify Chikezie, a staff attorney with the NYCLU. “That’s very independent of who the officer is.”

Courtesy the New York Civil Liberties Union

The map above is provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The number of traffic stops since January 2022 — 1,044,846 — is more than double the population of Staten Island. According to the new data analysis, 62% of drivers received a summons, 2% were arrested and less than 1% got their vehicle seized. The NYPD declined to answer questions about those summonses.

A spokesperson for the department said police are “laser focused” on combating car theft and dangerous driving. Police officers have stepped up enforcement in response to the 180 traffic fatalities and 27,000 collisions with injuries so far this year, the spokesperson said.

Vehicle thefts are also up 19% this year, according to the NYPD. In response, the department has made 49% more arrests for vehicle thefts. The spokesperson did not say how many of these arrests took place during a traffic stop.

According to Chikezie, police motives for a stop can be arbitrary.

“Cops have free reign,” she said.

Police have also been stopping more pedestrians since Adams took office. The NYPD is on track to stop more New Yorkers on foot this year than they have in any year since 2015, according to police data.

Just 5% of pedestrians stopped by police under Adams were white, revealing racial disparities even starker than at the height of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” era, Gothamist previously reported.