The looming and racially disproportionate shadow of stop-and-frisk continues to loom large over New York City more than a decade after the practice was declared unconstitutional, according to a new report.
amNewYork Metro spoke with legal experts who are weighing in after the study alleged that two specialized NYPD units are engaging in stop-and-frisk methods with members of the public.
The federal monitor overseeing the NYPD charges in its Feb. 3 report that the department’s Neighborhood Safety Teams (NST) and the Public Safety Teams (PST), which were created to tackle quality of life and gun violence in the city, performed controversial stop and frisks without probable cause. The monitor’s report, which looks at data from 2023, reveals that only about 60% of stops had legal basis while 89% of individuals the cops engaged in were Black and Hispanic men, insinuating that the officers had a racial bias.
Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in abusive police practices, believes that the units are conducting unlawful stops, especially on members of the Black and Brown communities.
“NST and PST wear uniforms but patrol in unmarked cars, and there have been numerous anecdotes about them driving up to someone and jumping out of their car to conduct unlawful (no reasonable suspicion) stops and unlawful frisks and searches,” Sisay said. “Despite these violations, command-level supervisors are not correcting these issues and found that only 1% of stops were unlawful in the period the Monitor reviewed.”
The NYPD resisted the report, arguing that the data used in it are outdated and do not accurately reflect the department’s state in 2025.
“We appreciate the monitor’s report and look forward to reviewing it. As the report notes, this data is from 2023, and the NYPD has taken affirmative steps since then to address many of these issues, including the implementation of ComplianceStat in January 2024,” an NYPD spokesperson said.
Police say that in January 2024, the NYPD implemented ComplianceStat, meetings attended by Patrol Borough commanding officers and the precinct commanding officers from those Patrol Bureaus. During these meetings, they scrutinize video footage that detects and corrects deficiencies. Additionally, these meetings focus on underreporting, stop, frisk, and search compliance, and BWC compliance in the prior 28-day period.
Sisay, on the other hand, argues that racial disparity has long been an issue within law enforcement anti-crime units, which continues to this day with the newest iteration in the form of Public Safety Teams and Neighborhood Safety Teams.
“In the early 2000s, the Center for Constitutional Rights and grassroots groups in the New York City police accountability movement, successfully won the dismantling of the Street Crimes Units. The unit was officially closed in April 2002. Since then, mayors and the NYPD have attempted to rebrand and retrain the units; however, the abuses remain,” Sisay said. “The NST and PST are Mayor Adams’ attempts to revamp these units. However, history shows that these units cannot be reformed. The NST and PST should not be allowed to continue violating New Yorkers’ rights.”
