the New York Civil Liberties Union obtained data on the NYPD’s use of vehicle stops, 670,000 drivers in 2022, it's no surprise that 90% of the people searched or arrested in those stops were Black or Latino.

“As with the pedestrian stops during the height of stop and frisk, we are now seeing numbers where it’s quite clear that Black and Latino drivers are being singled out for the most aggressive police activity,” said Christopher Dunn, the NYCLU's legal director.

The new vehicle stop data from the NYPD shows that the department’s hundreds of thousands of vehicle stops in 2022 rarely resulted in arrests. Officers made an arrest only about 2.2% of the time. About 77% of stops resulted in a summons for a minor violation, like driving with a broken tail light.

While pedestrian stops have been the subject of intense scrutiny in New York City in recent years, the new vehicle stops data provides an unprecedented look at a form of policing that, until recently, was used by the NYPD with little transparency. In 2021, the City Council passed a law requiring police to record and share quarterly reports on car stop numbers, broken down by race, gender and several other factors.

Farhang Heydari, executive director of NYU’s Policing Project, questioned whether vehicle stops are actually making the roads safer.

“Are we finding lots of people with murder warrants and violent, you know, people who have committed violent crimes? Or are we just arresting people who can’t afford to pay traffic tickets or other kinds of fines?” he said.

The police department has overhauled its approach to pedestrian stops in recent years, after a federal class-action lawsuit accused the NYPD of widespread racial profiling, and the numbers have dropped substantially — though they have started to tick back up under the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.

https://gothamist.com/news/about-90-of-drivers-searched-or-arrested-by-the-nypd-in-2022-were-black-or-latino