By Mylan Denerstein

This is the Monitor’s 23rd report and second report focused on the compliance of the New York City Police Department’s (the “Department” or “NYPD”) Neighborhood Safety Teams (“NST”) and Public Safety Teams (“PST”) with constitutional requirements in executing stops, frisks, and searches. In March 2021, the NYPD initiated NST units in certain precincts to combat gun violence in high-crime areas. Officers in NST units engage in proactive stop, frisks, and searches, and generally they are not expected to respond to 911 calls-for-service. NST officers drive unmarked cars and wear uniforms distinct from those worn by NYPD patrol officers. In June 2023, the Monitor filed the Nineteenth Report of the Independent Monitor (the “19th Report”) with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which contained results of the Monitor team’s 2022 audit of the NSTs. That report concluded that NST officers performed substantially below constitutional standards and had a rate of unlawful Terry stops nine percentage points higher than their counterparts in regular patrol positions. In addition, the report concluded that supervisors in the Department failed to identify and remediate unlawful reported stops. To determine Fourth Amendment compliance with the stops, frisks, and searches conducted by NSTs since the filing of the 19th Report, the Monitor began a second, more comprehensive audit of NSTs and PSTs, another specialized proactive enforcement unit, to assess their compliance with court-ordered reforms. This follow-up report audits NST, PST, and regular patrol officers based on stops, frisks, and searches conducted in 2023. It compares NST officers with their counterparts on regular patrol and in PSTs and measures compliance rates of all supervisors and officers regardless of unit assignment. Based on the 2023 audit, the Report concludes that NST and PST officers are not performing stops, frisks, and searches at constitutional levels, and that supervisors of NST, PST, and patrol officers are not appropriately overseeing their officers. Some of the key findings are below: • This 2023 audit shows that NST officers’ constitutional compliance with respect to stops, frisks, and searches did not improve since the Monitor’s 2022 audit. • In the 2023 audit, NST officers had reasonable suspicion (and thus a lawful basis) for 75% of the reported Terry stops, slightly below the NST percentage of 76% compliance in the 2022 audit. • In the 2023 audit, NST officers made lawful stops at a rate of 75%, 17 percentage points lower than their patrol counterparts’ rate of 92%. • In the 2023 audit, PST officers also made lawful stops at a rate lower than patrol officers, with only 64% of their reported stops being assessed as lawful, which is 28 percentage points lower than their patrol counterparts’ rate of 92%. • In the 2023 audit, NST officers and PST officers overwhelmingly conducted self-initiated stops (70% and 77%, respectively, were self-initiated), while officers on routine patrol primarily conducted stops based on radio runs (68% were radio runs). • In the 2023 audit, regardless of the officer’s unit assignment (NST, PST, Patrol, or other), Terry stops based on a complainant/witness (100% lawful) or a radio run (94% lawful) were nearly all constitutional, while only 65% of self-initiated stops were assessed as lawful. • In the 2023 audit, NST officers had reasonable suspicion for only 58% of the frisks assessed and had a legal basis for only 54% of the searches assessed. • In the 2023 audit, despite significant numbers of unlawful stops, frisks, and searches, command-level supervisors of NST, PST, and Patrol officers only determined that 1% of stops were unlawful and 1% of frisks and searches were unlawful. • In 95% of the stop reports in this audit in which race was identified (N=385) and 93% of the BWC videos assessed (N=697), the person stopped was identified as Black or Hispanic. Of the 397 stop reports in which gender was indicated, 97% were male. Overall, in this audit, 89% of the individuals encountered were Black or Hispanic males. The NYPD must focus on supervisors ensuring implementation of constitutionally compliant stops, frisks, and searches. The Department must improve Fourth Amendment compliance levels and NST and PST units must be better supervised. The ball is in the Department’s hands, and the NYPD can do this. The law requires no less.

New York: New York Police Department Monitor, 2025. 51p.

By George Shaler, Alison Grey, Lucy Tumavicus, Tara Wheeler, Clare Murray, Robyn Dumont

In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing four years ago, many people campaigned for police reform to hold law enforcement more accountable for their actions. At the same time, many law enforcement supporters pushed back, maintaining that in the midst of the pandemic and surge in crime that followed, a more robust law enforcement presence was needed. In response to the demand for greater accountability, various legislative and policy proposals were put forth. Most notably, in June 2020, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, H.R. 7120, was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would have held law enforcement officers accountable for misconduct in court, improved transparency through data collection, and reformed police training and policies. It would have required federal uniformed officers to wear body-worn cameras (BWCs) and would have required state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of those cameras.

While this legislation passed the House in both the 116th and 117th Congress, it failed to gain passage in the Senate each time and was not enacted. Despite this failure, among police reform initiatives, the use of body-worn cameras has received the most widespread bipartisan support. While some reformers would like to quicken the pace, the adoption of BWCs by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies continues to increase. Here in Maine, local, state, and federal funding has enabled agencies to purchase BWCs and implement their use.

Today, when high-profile events occur, there is often both an expectation that video footage exists and public pressure on law enforcement officials to release that footage. Civilians view the mere presence of a body-worn camera as the most important tool in the evaluation of allegations of use of force in police-civilian encounters. However, citizen access to BWC video depends on location. Each state has its own public records law that determines when and how the public may have access to BWC footage. Some states, like Maine, have not addressed BWC footage specifically. Therefore, the laws governing the release of BWC footage in Maine are aligned with existing public record laws and exemptions that are open to interpretation.

Maine Statistical Analysis Center, University of Southern Maine., 2024. 75p.

By SteVon Felton

The 1991 beating of Rodney King and the subsequent acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers responsible for the attack sparked massive riots and protests across the nation. Following an investigation by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, Congress granted the attorney general the power to investigate “a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that violates Constitutional or federal rights.” In cases of a proven pattern or practice of police misconduct, the court may use a federal, court-enforced order, known as a consent decree, as a mechanism to force police departments to address institutional failures. Under such orders, a law enforcement agency and the Justice Department, overseen by an independent monitor, negotiate and establish concrete benchmarks to determine which reforms will constitute the successful end of the decree. Since the first consent decree in 1994, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has conducted over 65 investigations and entered into 40 reform agreements with police departments across the country. According to the Division, these negotiations are most effective when they can “ensure accountability, transparency and the flexibility to accomplish complex institutional reforms.” Indeed, a number of studies have now confirmed that consent decrees helped resolve management and oversight issues in cities such as Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Cincinnati.4 However, while federal consent decrees have their place in promoting systemic policy change, they consistently fail to effect local and cultural change within departments. Several factors contribute to this phenomenon. For starters, as is often the case, centralized models like federal consent decrees cannot adequately adjust to localized systems of knowledge and regional distinctions between departments. Because they target local governments rather than individuals, the reform agreements reached by the DOJ and local law enforcement agencies often fail to sustain cultural change.5 Moreover, within some police departments, consent decrees lack the very thing that is perhaps most important to their success—the support of officers. Without buy-in from individual officers, police departments often disregard best practices that they view as externally forced upon them. And because policing is a profession that allows substantial discretion, in some departments officers openly ignore state and federal policies.6 Given the localized nature of police-citizen interactions, a top-down approach to police reform is virtually guaranteed to be unsuccessful. In light of these failures, the New Orleans Police Department’s Ethical Policing is Courageous (EPIC) program provides an alternative structure that begins with officers’ localized knowledge level and ends with systemic change. By allowing officers to police themselves, EPIC utilizes them and their experiences as resources to promote meaningful change

R STREET SHORTS NO. 70 April 2019

Washington, DC: R Street, 2019. 5p.