NYPD's quality of life crackdown expands to all Manhattan precincts Monday

The NYPD is expanding its new Quality of Life Division, sending “Q-Team” officers focused on cracking down on everyday neighborhood nuisances to every precinct in Manhattan starting Monday.

The Q-Teams are made up of specially trained NYPD officers assigned to address low-level issues, like illegal vending, reckless scooter riding and blocked sidewalks.

Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the initiative is intended to make residents feel safer in their neighborhoods. The expansion follows a two-month pilot in six precincts that officials said led to more than 6,100 summonses, 357 arrests and improved 311 response times by an average of 16 minutes.

“In just two months, the Quality of Life Division has done exactly what we set out to do: respond quickly, stay focused, and address the issues New Yorkers are calling about,” Tisch said. “Now, we’re scaling that success citywide. From illegal smoke shops to abandoned vehicles to reckless mopeds, these are the problems people see every day and expect action on.

The program will roll out to the other boroughs over the next six weeks, with full deployment expected by Labor Day. According to Tisch, the Bronx will follow on July 21, Brooklyn on July 28, Queens on Aug. 11, Staten Island on Aug. 18 and NYCHA housing commands citywide on Aug. 25.

The division will use a new system called “Q-Stat,” modeled after the department’s CompStat program, to track 311 complaints and guide operations, officials said.

Critics have expressed concerns that the initiative will lead to over-policing in under-resourced neighborhoods, a fear that’s persisted since the division was first announced earlier this year.

Michael Sisitzky, assistant policy director at the NYCLU, likened it to “broken windows” policing, a strategy that targets low-level offenses to prevent more serious crimes.

“The NYPD’s latest crackdown on so-called ‘quality of life’ offenses is the latest example of this administration’s unwillingness to think beyond the [former Mayor Rudy] Giuliani playbook,” Sisitzky said “This will result in even more time and resources being spent processing low-level arrests and summonses when those resources could have been better spent investing in the types of services that actually make New Yorkers’ lives better.”