Commish rips ‘illegal stops’ stat

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell says she “100 percent” objects to the notion that the NYPD’s revamped anti-crime unit is making deliberate, illegal stops — as she responded Friday to a scathing federal report that found fault in nearly a quarter of those interactions.

In a Friday morning NY1 interview, the top cop was questioned about a recent report by the department’s federal monitor Mylan Denerstein, who concluded that 45 of the 184 encounters made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams (NST) in the second quarter of 2022 — or 24% — did not have a reasonable cause. Asked whether Sewell “takes exception” to NST’s stops being labeled “illegally conducted,” she said she does — adding that the squad’s errors are often inadvertent and come down to officers’ misunderstandings or miscommunications.

“One-hundred percent I take exception to that,” she said. “What we’ve seen most often than not is that there’s an inability or a training issue when it comes to articulating the level of stop that they are at,” Sewell added. “Oftentimes, it’s an officer believing they [have] reasonable suspicion without founded suspicion.

“So we’ve addressed that with training,” she said. “We’ve addressed that with oversight.”