CUNY ISLG Review of NYPD Body-Worn Camera Footage finds 19% of Reported Stops Unconstitutional

In the study, filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, CUNY’s Institute for State & Local Governance reviewed thousands of hours of BWC footage to evaluate compliance with court orders and the law. 

May 2, 2025 

Media Contact: 

Carla Sinclair, CUNY ISLG: carla.sinclair@islg.cuny.edu 

New York, New York – Today, the Institute for State & Local Governance at the City University of New York (CUNY ISLG) released an independent study of the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD’s) compliance with court-ordered measures after its stop-and-frisk practices were found unconstitutional. The report was filed with United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) with District Judge Analisa Torres on the Floyd, Ligon, and Davis dockets. 

In 2013, SDNY ruled that stop and frisk practices employed by the NYPD were unconstitutional, specifically violating the Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure as well as the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protections under the law due to the discriminatory nature of the stops. A Monitor was installed to oversee compliance, and in 2021, CUNY ISLG was brought in to conduct a study using information captured on body-worn cameras (BWCs). 

The CUNY ISLG study examined police encounters recorded by BWCs over a two-month period in 2022 to assess how frequently stops were constitutional. The study also assessed whether police were appropriately documenting stops. The overarching goal of the study was to provide information on the NYPD’s compliance with court-ordered reforms in three primary focus areas.

See the executive summary and full report for the complete findings.

Select findings, by focus area: 

• Constitutionality of stops and frisks. The study assessed how frequently officers who conduct stops violate the Fourth Amendment, examined the conditions in which unconstitutional stops occur, and identified the reasons a stop was unconstitutional.  

  • Seventy-two percent of the stops were constitutional and 19 percent unconstitutional. The remaining 9 percent had either no consensus or insufficient information. 

  • Unconstitutional stops were particularly prevalent among stops conducted by officers assigned to a Neighborhood Safety Team (NST), which are special units tasked with securing illegal guns. Thirty-five percent of stops were unconstitutional when an NST officer was present compared to 16 percent of stops without one.  

Seventy-two percent of the stops were constitutional and 19 percent unconstitutional.
The remaining 9 percent had either no consensus or insufficient information. 

• Differences by race and ethnicity. To assess compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment, the study examined differences in constitutionality by race and ethnicity, including by conducting statistical analysis to assess differences in the constitutionality of a stop. 

  • Among all stops, 21 percent and 19 percent of the stops of Black and Hispanic individuals were rated as unconstitutional, respectively, compared to 11 percent of the stops of all other races. 

  • Black and Hispanic individuals constituted 97 percent of self-initiated stops. Self-initiated stops of Black and Hispanic individuals were unconstitutional at 48 and 46 percent, respectively, compared to 15 percent of the self-initiated stops of individuals of all other races. 

• Full and accurate documentation of stops. The study assessed the prevalence of unreported stops and the conditions in which officers most often fail to document stops appropriately in the field. 

  • Among encounters that are low-level (i.e. officers did not indicate that a stop, arrest, or summons occurred), 2 percent of individuals were in fact stopped but not documented by police with a stop report. While this number is small in percentage terms, it indicates a large number of unreported stops because low-level encounters (not labeled as including a stop, arrest, or summons) are extremely numerous (approximately 650,000 recordings or 200,000 encounters). 

"This study is a step toward making New York City policing based both in community safety and constitutionality. Data like this is essential in doing that. It equips departments, policymakers and communities with the tools to drive meaningful reform, uphold our constitutional rights and ultimately make public safety systems more just and more trusted,” said Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of CUNY ISLG. “Accountability and effective policing are not mutually exclusive—they must go hand in hand." 

“The data collected for the study is incredibly rich, and provides deep insight into police interactions with the public—documenting what occurred and whether police actions were legal. The study was only possible through the combined efforts of a large interdisciplinary team of legal experts, data scientists, researchers and more.”

“The data collected for the study is incredibly rich, and provides deep insight into police interactions with the public—documenting what occurred and whether police actions were legal. The study was only possible through the combined efforts of a large interdisciplinary team of legal experts, data scientists, researchers and more,” said Kathleen Doherty, Research Project Director at CUNY ISLG. “This study provides a look into how the police interact with the public on the street using novel methods and hopefully charts a path forward by identifying clear areas for reform.”