By Joy Bergmann
The NYPD used to post new traffic enforcement data around the 15th of each month. One could expect May stats around June 15th, for example.
On July 11th, WSR pulled up the NYPD’s Moving Violation Summonses web page. The most recent data presented was from February, 2023.
A call to the NYPD’s press office asking about the availability of more recent stats yielded no explanation. The spokesman asked WSR to email the question.
We soon received this one-line response: “When the information is available, it will be posted online.”
Why is this data so important?
These reports provide an accounting of the traffic tickets NYPD has issued for offenses like speeding, running red lights and failing to yield to pedestrians. Such enforcement is a top issue for many WSR readers, especially given the recent death of pedestrian Angel Rodriguez-Albuquerque and the life-altering injuries suffered by others after being struck by scofflaw drivers.
WSR has regularly evaluated Moving Violation Summonses data for UWS precincts to document their traffic enforcement efforts.
Our previous analysis in February 2022, showed a sharp decline in traffic ticketing when compared to the same period in 2019/20, prior to the pandemic and 2020 protests following George Floyd’s death. The 20th Precinct had a 68% drop in summons numbers; the 24th Precinct’s fell 53%.
At that time, NYPD cited its “finite number of resources” when asked to explain the decline.
A veteran cop who spoke on the condition of anonymity, however, placed the blame on a then-new form requiring officers to record demographic information – race/ethnicity, age, gender – about each driver or biker stopped, whether a violation is issued or not. “You’d have to be crazy to do a traffic stop now,” he told WSR, calling the new requirements another “attack” by groups “driven to prove bias” in policing.
In an interview with WSR, Christopher Dunn, Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called that objection ridiculous. “Get another job. Police officers fill out paperwork all the time. If you don’t want to be accountable, if you don’t want to do the job, then do something else.” [WSR presented additional data comparisons in November and June of 2021.]
So, what do the latest numbers show?
We don’t know. As of July 17, the Moving Violation Summonses web page has not been updated.
The NYPD Transportation Bureau, led by Chief Kim Y. Royster, advocates for safer driving on its Twitter feed:
🚶♀️🚶🚶♂️🚶♀️🚶🚶♂️🚶♀️🚶🚶♂️
It's WALKING WEDNESDAYAlways look for and yield to pedestrians when making turns pic.twitter.com/yIR8shOY26
— NYPD Transportation Bureau (@NYPDTransport) July 12, 2023
Traffic violence victims’ family members, including Dana Lerner whose 10-year-old son Cooper Stock was killed by a reckless taxi driver on the UWS, have been pushing for stricter laws like Sammy’s Law to lower the city’s speed limit.
But without enforcement action, any and all traffic laws are essentially toothless.
And without ticketing data, citizens do not know how vigorously NYPD is enforcing traffic laws.
Wow, interesting comments by both “veteran cop” and spokesperson. No stops, no data…no policing? And the NYPD budget is how many billion? Surely a rational approach can address this. What is the fear – that data will not show traffic infractions/moving violations to perfectly reflect demographics? Do drivers perfectly represent residential demographics? Scooter riders? Get some baseline data (like a control group) and then encourage beat cops to enforce the laws! This is not so hard. But it sounds as if there may be an enforcement issue.
According to p. 5 of this City Council Finance Dept PDF document, NYC spends about $11 billion per year on the NYPD budget and associated costs. There are 35, 000 uniformed officers and ~14,000 civilian NYPD employees [p.8]:
https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2023/03/NYPD-1.pdf
This afternoon the traffic light at 79th & Bway was broken. Several of us pedestrians asked the traffic cop working 79th & WEA if he’d move down to Bway and take control of the chaos. He told us no, he couldn’t — we should call 911. He told me traffic cops were so understaffed there wasn’t anyone to send. The 25th Pct told him they didn’t have anyone they could send either. And the traffic light repair person was coming in from Brooklyn.
That’s “finite number of resources” in action.
Most traffic cops at WE and 79th and Riverside and 79th do absolutely nothing. Zhang, who works some mornings, is proactive and attentive. The others are a giant waste of money: they are typically on the side walks on their phones.
Sometimes there’s a staff of 3-4 hanging out around a patrol car. Would really like to understand what ‘Understaffed’ means.
Also, disappointed today’s WE cop couldn’t make a judgement call, leave WE (where there are functional traffic lights) and move to Broadway.
Any NYPD officer can write a traffic ticket for a violation. It does not have to be someone assigned to traffic bureau or duty.
People forget we had a pandemic in 2020. The City lost a great amount of monies up to the billions of dollars. It will take many many more years to make up for the lost with limited hiring.
Lots of things happened in 2020 that affected hiring.
Great job keeping local institutions accountable! Thank you WSR!
What’s the most dangerous thing on the UWS? Hint: Neither gangs and guns nor the homeless…it’s traffic. Truly terrible that the NYPD appears to have abandoned traffic enforcement.
Great job WSR reporting on this very important issue – we need articles like this to hold our local institutions accountable.
As to the merits, is anyone else appalled by (unfortunately unsurprising) statement that bad vibes are preventing the police from enforcing the law? Is it really too much to ask of law enforcement to do their jobs?
Is it too much to thank law enforcement when they do their jobs?
To quote Mad Men here: that’s what the money is for!
If you don’t want to do the job you are getting paid for, find another line of work.
Right but in this case they aren’t doing their jobs so no thanks needed…
The lack of thanks came before them not doing anything.
We’ll see if the moderators let this one pass – but this type of thinking is dangerous, illogical, and servile.
How would you feel if the sanitation department effectively went on a wildcat strike? When was the last time you thanked a garbageman?
Where is the money in the city’s coffers going? It’s certainly not going for our “common good”. Who’s it being spent on?
Here is an interesting thing about the Police, It’s really difficult to measure performance. Quotas are illegal, You can’t tell a cop they have to make X .number of arrests or write Z number of summonses. Smart Cops are not going to stick their necks out to enforce the law if they feel that they are going to get in trouble for doing their job.
The majority of the NYPD don’t live in the city so anti- police policies that discourage proactive police work don’t really affect them, it affects New Yorkers.
To the people who say Cops have to do their job this is true but in order to get in trouble a Cop has blatantly ignore someone in immediate danger and I have never seen a cop get in trouble for doing close to nothing.
Watch the morning news tomorrow and you will see exactly what happens to a Cop from this neighborhood who does his job and lawfully protects himself, watch and see how Alvin Bragg puts his political agenda above the safety of New Yorkers. Watch and you will see how this city treats cops and the next time you see a NYPD cop standing there like a blue potted plant, maybe you will understand why.
for the rest of us, we stand around like a potted plant, we get fired.