The Community Response Team (CRT) announced itself to the world in 2022 — not by press conference or an official launch — but through a now-unlisted YouTube short titled “True Blue: NYPD’s Finest.”

“Viewer discretion is advised” warns a gravely male narrator before the video breaks into dramatic action sequences captured on body-camera footage. CRT rushes onto the scene. An officer drags a suspect off an ATV. Another tends to a bloodied individual sitting in a car’s front seat. Think “Cops” without the reggae.

But a recent review of the unit’s body-camera footage by the city’s independent stop-and-frisk monitor portrayed the CRT as less action movie-esque. The findings concluded significantly higher rates of unconstitutional encounters than the average NYPD patrol officer based on the sample size of recordings, as shown in the chart below:

Percentage Rate of Lawful Stops, Frisks and Searches (based on report)

Twenty-Fifth Report of the Independent Monitor

The monitor’s report also found racial disparities from a smaller sample size. In the 78 traffic stops reviewed, 89% of the motorists were Black or Hispanic. The monitor also reviewed 21 non-vehicular encounters involving members of the public and found 86% of the individuals stopped by CRT were Black and Hispanic.

Findings from the report stem from an audit of 100 body-worn camera videos from the CRT roster provided by the NYPD to the monitor last October, which contained 186 uniformed officers including 134 on the line-level. The footage all occurred between Oct. 28, 2024 and Nov. 24, 2024. Khakis uniquely worn by CRT personnel were used to confirm the officers belonged in the unit.

While stops based on the probable cause of a traffic violation is lawful, the encounter can still violate the Fourth Amendment if the individual is detained for an excessive amount of time or a frisk is conducted without consent or reasonable suspicion of a weapon.

During the review, the monitor also looked specifically at 50 level 2 stops, which allow officers to ask accusatory questions, request a search and do not require filling out a report. Seven encounters labeled as level 2 stops were actually level 3 stops — better known as Terry stops or stop-and-frisks — which require reasonable suspicion and a report for each person stopped.

35 of the reviewed level 2 stops were traffic stops and all of them ended in searches. No contraband was found. Fewer than half ended with the officers issuing a traffic citation. Every person stopped in the 35 level 2 traffic stops and 15 non-traffic stops was Black or Hispanic.

Conflating the level 2 and level 3 stops can be particularly dangerous. Individuals can legally walk away at any time from a level 2 but are detained under a level 3. In 2024, city council passed the “How Many Stops Act” which mandates documentation of level 1 and 2 stops.

Lastly, the monitor looked at 50 stop reports. Almost all stemmed from officers self-initiating a Criminal Possession of a Weapon (CPW) stop. Every individual stopped was Black or Brown when the reports identified the individual’s race. Nine encounters from the stop reports ended in an arrest, all for CPW.

Several class action lawsuits over the past decade led to a federal judge installing the NYPD monitor and mandating reforms including a body-worn camera pilot. Notably, Floyd v. City of New York found the city liable for violating the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment with the police department’s stop-and-frisk practices targeting Black and Brown New Yorkers.

“The latest report from the Monitor is further evidence that the NYPD, rather than addressing ongoing racial profiling and illegal stops by its officers, is instead moving back to its old practices of creating specialized ‘units’ with unclear purposes but clear and immediate disparate racial impacts,” said Celine Zhu, an attorney at Floyd class co-counsel Center for Constitutional Rights over email. “These types of units have always engaged in aggressive stop and frisk tactics in NYC. Instead of doubling down on the disproven theory of ‘broken windows policing’ the NYPD should be putting resources toward ending racial profiling within its ranks.”

Back in 2023, the monitor began looking into CRT due to a lack of transparency. The NYPD maintained the then-pilot program would address quality-of-life concerns rather than “routinely” engage in stop-and-frisks.

CRT first came under official scrutiny last November when the Office of the Inspector General-NYPD (OIG-NYPD) looked into the lack of public information about the unit. In fact, most knowledge came from the “True Blue: NYPD’s Finest” video and a tweet from then-NYPD deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry (and now deputy mayor of public safety) about fallen officer Jonathan Diller, who served in CRT.

“The CRT is a specialized team of highly trained officers whose mission it is to restore order,” wrote Daughtry on March 26, 2024. “This work often involves addressing those quality of life conditions that disrupt our way of life and diminish our collective safety. Many of these offenses also escalate into other, more dangerous crimes.”

But what “quality of life” exactly entails remains unknown. CRT does not generally respond to 911 or 311 complaints for issues like noise or illegally parked cars based on the monitor’s findings as 96% of the reviewed stops were self-initiated by the officers.

“Quality of life has normally been invoked as some sort of vague or pre-textual notion to engage in really problematic policing behavior,” said John Cusick, assistant counsel for the NAACP LDF, which represents plaintiffs in Davis, another monitorship case. “And here, that same term was used…there are no clear rules or limits to effectively oversee what CRT is doing based on [the OIG-NYPD’s] report. When you don’t have guidance, you have a very vaguely defined ‘quality of life.’”

This past April, the NYPD agreed to almost all recommendations made by the OIG-NYPD, including providing a CRT mission statement and including information about the unit on the police department’s website. A follow-up report on implementation will come out next year.

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