A federal monitor has found that the New York City Police Department failed to properly review thousands of stop-and-frisk encounters conducted by its Community Response Team, violating requirements from a 2013 court order that found the department had been unconstitutionally targeting Black and Hispanic residents. According to data disclosed by the monitor, more than 2,000 stops were not audited for legality over nearly three years.
The oversight failure comes as the NYPD faces scrutiny over the tactics of the Community Response Team, or CRT, an aggressive unit created in 2023 that has drawn hundreds of civilian complaints and operates under a court-appointed federal monitor. The monitor, Mylan Denerstein, recently informed the court that stops made by CRT officers were not reviewed for constitutional compliance during this period.
What the Left Is Saying
State Sen. Jessica Ramos, who has previously spoken about being wrongfully stopped and frisked by NYPD officers more than a decade ago, called for the unit to be disbanded. "The Community Response Team has operated with too little oversight and caused too much harm," Ramos said in a statement. "A unit with this record should not continue."
Lawyers at the New York Civil Liberties Union, one of the original plaintiffs in the 2013 stop-and-frisk case that led to the court order, also called for the CRT to be eliminated. "These units have a long history of aggressive policing against people of color," said Daniel Lambright, the organization's director of criminal justice litigation. "There is no basis for them. They do more harm than good and they need to go."
Civil rights advocates have argued that the failure to audit stops undermines the entire purpose of court oversight, allowing unconstitutional police tactics to continue unchecked.
What the Right Is Saying
John Chell, who served as one of the unit's former commanders and retired as the department's top uniformed officer last year, defended the CRT's record. "This team really changed the game," Chell said in a statement. "Did we make mistakes? Sure. But we stabilized the city. We did our job."
The NYPD provided a statement saying it moved to address the issues once identified. "Under Commissioner Jessica Tisch the NYPD has taken significant additional steps to increase oversight and accountability," the department said. "The Monitor and the NYPD identified this error, and the NYPD is working collaboratively with the Monitor to address it."
Supporters of aggressive policing tactics argue that units like the CRT target quality-of-life offenses such as unlicensed motorbikes and ATVs that affect neighborhood safety, and have pointed to Mayor Eric Adams's past support for expanding the unit.
What the Numbers Show
According to data from the federal monitor, more than 2,000 stops by CRT officers were not properly reviewed for legality. The Community Response Team has grown to approximately 180 officers since its creation in 2023.
A report by the federal monitor found that only 59% of stops, searches and frisks conducted by CRT officers were lawful, a significantly worse rate than NYPD patrol units overall. Nearly all of those stops involved Black or Hispanic residents.
A ProPublica analysis of Civilian Complaint Review Board data found that more than half of the officers assigned to the CRT have been found by the board to have engaged in misconduct at least once in their career. That compares with a small fraction of NYPD officers department-wide. The unit has received hundreds of civilian complaints since its creation.
The federal monitor noted in a letter to the court that because stops were not reviewed, the actual rate of constitutional compliance is likely lower than the 59% figure previously reported.
The Bottom Line
The discovery that thousands of stops went unaudited represents a significant failure by the NYPD to comply with court-ordered reforms from the 2013 ruling. Federal Monitor Mylan Denerstein said in a statement that "unconstitutional stops, frisks and searches went undetected" due to the lack of audits.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office in January after campaigning on criminal justice reform issues, has not yet publicly addressed whether his administration will maintain or restructure the CRT. The unit's future is expected to be a subject of debate during upcoming budget negotiations and oversight hearings.
The monitor has called on the city to take additional steps to prevent similar failures and ensure that constitutional compliance reviews continue as required under the court order.