NEW YORK — Cops across the city recorded more street stops at the end of last year than at any point since before the pandemic, according to NYPD data.
The 3,090 stops in the last three months of 2021 represent a 45% spike from the same time frame in 2020 — and the tally is the most since the 3,258 stops recorded in the first quarter of 2020.
A court-appointed monitor last year said that there was “substantial evidence” cops in prior years had been underreporting stops.
The NYPD in a statement this week said officers are now being better trained, with more stops properly documented. The department also said it would be wrong to look at three months of data as a trend, noting that a jump in stops often corresponds to increased enforcement.
“There are myriad circumstances that influence the constitutional use of this policing tool — everything from crime and upticks in street-level gun violence to departmental staffing and officer deployment,” the statement said.
An Adams spokesman said the increase in stops reflects the surge in gun arrests last year. Each arrest is supposed to be document in a stop, question and frisk report.
Christopher Dunn, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the year-end bump “notable” but said it’s hard to tell if cops are actually making more stops or are recording more of them, as police contend.
“What is clear,” Dunn said, “is that the quarter will serve as a benchmark going forward for policing under the new administration.”
The stop and frisk controversy, with the NYPD accused or profiling minorities, an overwhelming majority of whom were neither arrested or summonsed, has waned in recent years. The 9,186 stops for all of last year represent a 99% decrease since 2011, when there were 685,724 stops.
The NYPD is bringing back a reconstituted version of the anti-crime units that had been regularly accused of unconstitutional street stops. And Mayor Adams has made public safety his priority, raising concerns among civil libertarians that cops might get too aggressive.
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(With Michael Gartland)
