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NYPD specialized units conducted unconstitutional stops at far higher rates than patrol officers, federal monitor found

A federal court-appointed monitor's Thirty-First Report, filed August 17, 2026 in the Floyd v. City of New York stop-and-frisk case, found that NYPD's specialized units -- the Neighborhood Safety Teams, Community Response Teams, and now-disbanded Public Safety Teams -- made unlawful stops, frisks, and searches at far higher rates than officers on routine patrol, based on a sample of 603 stops in 2025. Unlawful stops occurred in 17% of specialized-unit encounters versus 6% for other officers, and 91% of the people stopped were Black or Hispanic. The units missed nearly every compliance benchmark the monitor had set for the fourth quarter of 2025.

Jurisdiction
New York City
Location
New York, New York

Abuses documented

Actors

  • New York City Police Department

On August 17, 2026, the federal court-appointed monitor overseeing the New York City Police Department's compliance with the Floyd v. City of New York stop-and-frisk consent decree filed a Thirty-First Report finding that the department's specialized units -- the Neighborhood Safety Teams, Community Response Teams, and the now-disbanded Public Safety Teams -- conducted unconstitutional stops, frisks, and searches at markedly higher rates than officers on routine patrol.

Examining a sample of 603 stops made by specialized-unit officers in 2025, the monitor found 17% were unlawful, compared with 6% for routine-patrol and other non-specialized officers. Unlawful frisks occurred nearly twice as often (31% versus 17%), and unlawful searches at a substantially higher rate (38% versus 21%). The units failed nearly every compliance benchmark the monitor had set for the fourth quarter of 2025 -- 85% lawful compliance by the third quarter and 90% by year's end -- while producing fewer arrests than patrol stops: about one in five specialized-unit stops led to an arrest, compared with more than four in ten for other units.

The monitor also found that 91% of people stopped by specialized units were Black or Hispanic, and 88% were Black or Hispanic men. The report additionally found that NYPD violated a prior court order by failing to audit Community Response Team stops for roughly three years beginning in March 2023, a lapse that expanded department-wide in September 2025 before auditing resumed in March 2026.

Why we recorded this

The Fourth Amendment requires that a police stop rest on individualized, lawful suspicion, not merely produce one after the fact. A federal court monitor found NYPD's specialized units made unconstitutional stops, frisks, and searches at roughly triple the rate of routine patrol officers, missing nearly every compliance benchmark the monitor had set for the department, while 91% of the people stopped were Black or Hispanic. This archive records the finding because it documents a two-decade-old federal consent decree still failing to bring a subset of NYPD officers into compliance with the constitutional stop standard it was created to enforce.

Sources

  1. Latest Report: Monitor's Thirty-First Report (NYPD Specialized Units) — Independent Monitor, Floyd v. City of New York primary accessed August 18, 2026
  2. NYPD's specialized units conduct unconstitutional stops at higher rate, court monitor finds — Gothamist primary accessed August 18, 2026

See also