The number of car crashes following police chases has skyrocketed under Mayor Eric Adams, with more than one collision per day recorded on average this year, according to an analysis of NYPD data by THE CITY.
In the first 11 months of 2024, an unprecedented 398 vehicle crashes were preceded by police pursuits, resulting in at least 315 people injured — up 47% from the 215 people injured over the same period last year — according to motor vehicle collision data made public by the police department.
These new findings follow THE CITY’s reporting last year on the unparalleled number of police car pursuits — a record on track to be broken this year.
The nearly 400 crashes through the end of November of this year — an average of more than nine a week — is an increase of 47% from the then-record 270 crashes over the same period last year and vastly up from an average of just 84 such crashes a year under the previous mayoral administration.
The NYPD did not respond to THE CITY’s request for comment.
“That’s horrifying,” Alexa Sledge, a spokesperson for the traffic safety advocacy nonprofit Transportation Alternatives, said when THE CITY shared its findings. “When so many people think of police activities and police chases, people think about officers doing that to keep New Yorkers safe. But at the end of the day, nothing can really keep us safe if it’s… leading to completely preventable losses, crashes and serious injuries.”
While the death count in the NYPD’s public collision data lists none since 2014, a review of media reports over the past two years shows at least 13 people were killed, or sustained serious injuries that eventually killed them, in the course of police pursuits, including seven so far this year — most often by the fleeing driver.
In May, for example, a driver fleeing from the NYPD in Bushwick slammed onto a Honda Pilot, sending a 29-year-old passenger in its backseat, Micah Dukes, flying and to the hospital in critical condition. Dukes died from those injuries about a week later.
Last December, Tiana Rodriguez, a 21-year-old passenger of a Lamborghini fleeing from the police for a red light violation, was also killed after the car struck a pillar supporting an above-ground train track in Inwood, Manhattan.
Neither incident was documented in public NYPD data on crashes after police pursuits.
A former NYPD official with knowledge of the data said the mismatch can be largely attributed to discrepancies between internal data and what’s made available publicly.
“Internally, they would update the crash count to register a fatality or an injury,” the former official said. “So that just means they’re probably not updating the open data feed.”
Sledge noted that these inconsistencies and inaccuracies often make policy reform work for people like herself more challenging, and that advocates like herself have had to compile their own databases to better understand the consequences of these police pursuits.
“It’s completely unfair and unacceptable,” Sledge added.
‘Over and Over Again’
The number of chases and crashes began spiking in late 2022, when John Chell was promoted to Chief of Patrol and Jeffrey Maddrey to Chief of Department. While crash numbers have begun to drop since June and chase numbers, in January, so far they’ve remained overall up from the same time periods last year.
“People thinking they can take off on us, those days are over,” Chell declared last July, responding to reporting by THE CITY showing that the 625 chases in the first six months of that year exceeded the count for the previous five years combined.
In an internal memo issued last August by NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the department’s top uniformed official, reiterated department policy that “a vehicle pursuit must be terminated whenever the risks to members of the service and the public outweigh the danger to the community if the suspect is not immediately apprehended.” The number of crashes peaked at a record 53 this June. To put that in perspective, there were never more than 11 crashes in a month between 2017 and 2021.
“The rank incompetence — you can’t call Internal Affairs for that,” said a former NYPD official critical of what they called the current leadership’s “reckless” approach. “The pursuits are a great example. It’s a terrible policy decision that’s going to kill people, but it’s not illegal.”
The NYPD recorded 1,523 chases from January to September of 2024 — up 47% from the 1,035 incidents over the same period last year. Nearly one in four of those pursuits, accounting for 345 incidents, resulted in a collision according to the department’s public data.
The same data shows 315 people, including 19 pedestrians and a cyclist, were injured in chases by November this year.
Adams, who served for 22 years as a NYPD officer, has largely defended the chases when asked about them, saying last month that “you don’t want an innocent person being hit or killed or seriously injured based on a chase but I have to trust that supervisor that’s on the ground to do that evaluation and make that call.”
According to NYPD public data, about 42% of crashes citywide through November this year resulted in injuries. That number is higher in The Bronx, where every other crash resulted in at least one injury, adding to a total of 112 injuries so far this year — the most of any borough.
Drivers, passengers and pedestrians in the vicinity of these pursuits often end up as victims of the crashes that result from them — as was the case in a police chase this August that started in Eltingville, Staten Island after a 46-year old driver drove through a red light.
The driver, who allegedly sped up to triple-digit velocity upon hearing the police sirens, eventually crashed head-on into an SUV in Gowanus, Brooklyn, causing a laceration and contusion to the SUV driver.
In another police pursuit in Astoria in October, 37-year-old cyclist Amanda Servedio was fatally struck by a pickup truck driver fleeing the police.
That death was one of a handful that were reported in the press but not reflected in the NYPD’s publicly available data — which also don’t distinguish between injuries to civilians and to police officers, or specify whether police cars were involved in the collisions stemming from their pursuits.
Altogether, the data, which goes back to May 2014, shows 799 crashes following police chases in the less than three years under Adams — which exceeds the 690 of such crashes in the seven-and-a-half years before he became mayor.
In Queens, the number of chases nearly doubled to 546 between January to September this year from 278 in the same period last year — the most of any borough and the sharpest rise.
Crashes went up, too, rising 68% to 126 in the first 11 months this year from 75 over the same period last year, including 21 so far this year in Queens Village-Bellrose-Rosedale — the most of any community district.
Other Southeast Queens neighborhoods like Jamaica, Ozone Park and Rockaway were also hit hard with crashes, as were Bedford Park and Bronx Park in The Bronx.
The most recent Mayor’s Management Report, covering the fiscal year that ended in June, showed a steep rise in “collisions per 100,000 miles involving city vehicles,” up to 6.4 from 3.7 the previous fiscal year.
“They repeatedly happen over and over again, and obviously the police know that they’re happening — so what’s the point of having the policy if we’re not following it, we’re not enforcing it, and we’re not showing that it’s actually a priority for us,” Sledge said, referring to the NYPD’s guidelines for terminating pursuits.
“We need the new police commissioner to recommit to this policy,” she added, referring to Jessica Tisch, who started last month as Adams’ fourth police commissioner in less than three years.
Suhail Bhat contributed reporting.
