The number of arrests by the NYPD spiked by 20% in 2022, the first year of the Adams administration — with the busts still overwhelmingly of Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, a new report finds.
Arrests for felonies and misdemeanors jumped from 131,731 in 2021 to 156,836 in 2022, with just under 90% of the arrestees Black or Hispanic, the Police Reform Organizing Project report concludes.
In 2022, 88% of arrests involved people of color, while in 2020 and 2021, the figure was 87%.
“It’s a matter of policy,” said PROP director Robert Gangi. “They deploy more police officers in the streets in poor neighborhoods of color and the NYPD’s quota system puts pressure on police to make arrests and give out summonses. In higher income communities with a larger white population, cops have told us there is no quota or it’s a much lower quota.”
The NYPD has denied it imposes arrest quotas on cops.
Gangi, a prominent NYPD critic, lost a long-shot primary bid to unseat Mayor de Blasio in 2017.
Under Mayor Adams, the NYPD has “escalated its discriminatory practices,” Gangi charges.
“Arrests for one offense category, the misdemeanor possession of a forged instrument, involves 94% New Yorkers of color,” he noted.
Cops made 84,226 misdemeanor arrests in 2022 compared to 70,375 in 2021, the figures show.
The increase was driven in part of a large jump in petty larceny arrests, which rose 42% from 10,196 in 2021 to 14,577 in 2022. Petty larceny is charged when the value of stolen items is below $1,000, according to the state penal law.
Eighty percent of the people arrested for petty larceny were Black or Hispanic.
The racial breakdown was stark misdemeanor charges across the board, from 90% Black or Hispanic for low-level assault to 82% for minor drug possession to 91.5% of fare beating arrests.
Blacks make up 25% of the population but more than 52% of felony arrests, the report said.