“This New Legislation Is A Significant Victory” Statement on City Council Package To Redefine Public Safety and NYPD Role In Crash Investigations
NEW YORK CITY — In response to a package of police reform bills announced by the City Council today, specifically legislation that would transfer the primary responsibility for investigating serious vehicular crashes from the NYPD to NYC DOT, Transportation Alternatives released the following statement:
Statement from Executive Director Danny Harris:
“The NYPD has failed to sufficiently investigate fatal traffic crashes, and change is long overdue. This new legislation is a significant victory for our campaign to reimagine traffic enforcement and our push to remove investigations from the purview of NYPD alone. We strongly support this bill, and continue to urge a reallocation of resources from the NYPD to NYC DOT to ensure our streets are built for safety. Physical redesigns are the best way to prevent crashes -- and investigations -- from occurring in the first place.”
Additional information on background:
In Summer 2020, Transportation Alternatives released a report making the case for reimagining traffic enforcement, in which they specifically called for reform of crash response by NYPD, and including NYC DOT in investigations.
In this report, Transportation Alternatives suggested that every fatal or serious injury crash should be followed by a published engineering assessment of the street conditions that contributed to the crash and changes that could have prevented the crash or limited the severity of injuries.
Similarly, the new legislation announced today would require NYC DOT to create a crash investigation and analysis unit tasked with investigating all vehicle crashes involving significant injury
The report also documented (on page 15) a significant number of failures of the NYPD’s current approach to crash investigations, saying:
The NYPD Collision Investigation Squad (NYPD CIS) is tasked with investigating all fatal and serious injury crashes that occur on New York City streets and highways but largely fails to meet this mandate. With a staff of 26, NYPD CIS responds to only five percent of fatal and serious injury crashes that occur in New York City, which can number as high as 3,000. At the same time, the NYPD CIS has refused additional funding to expand its staff and resources to meet its mission. Beyond the failures to investigate the vast majority of fatal and serious injury crashes, additional problems persist in NYPD CIS, including a deeply disturbing pattern of victim-blaming in the aftermath of crashes, a habit of leaking premature conclusions to the media, a failure to notify crash victims of their rights and critical deadlines to file for no-fault insurance, and blocking crash victims and their families from obtaining collision reports needed for insurance and health care. The NYPD CIS has proven incapable or unwilling to address these problems.