Our Mission & Focus
The Monitor Team works to ensure that the NYPD engages in constitutional stops, frisks, and searches.
The Monitor Team’s focus is on the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, as well as its trespass enforcement. The Monitor Team regularly assesses the NYPD’s compliance and publicly files reports with the court detailing their findings.
Know Your Rights
When you are stopped, frisked, and/or searched by a New York City police officer, you have certain rights.
Who We Are
Latest Report
On February 17, 2026, the Monitor filed its 2025 End of Year Update Letter, a review of the NYPD’s 2025 constitutional compliance efforts, with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Highlights include the following:
- The NYPD continues to lack meaningful accountability. This is in part due to lack of supervision, with supervisors approving as lawful stops, frisks, and searches, even when they are not; and lack of robust corrective actions.
- While the NYPD has instituted new oversight mechanisms, such as ComplianceStat and the Early Intervention Program, continued review to ensure the mechanisms create accountability is needed. For example, while one patrol borough showed improvement over repeated ComplianceStat appearances, its most recent review in January 2026 showed that individuals with repeated failures still were not subject to discipline. And despite changes to the Early Intervention Program, it still appears to be insufficient to reduce unlawful behavior, because it lacks ongoing monitoring and commanding officers fail to recognize problematic behavior and justify it when flagged.
- Self-initiated stops, particularly by specialized units, continue to be substantially more unlawful than other types of encounters. Supervisors and commanding officers fail to identify unlawful stops, frisks, and searches. The Monitor’s preliminary audits show that the NYPD is unlikely to meet the third quarter and year-end 2025 compliance goals.
- There continues to be underreporting of stops, with almost one-third of encounters either not reported or improperly categorized.
- The Department continues its Fourteenth Amendment Compliance activities. It has continue its development of a Fourteenth Amendment Compliance Plan, with a pilot expected to begin in 2026.
