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Comptroller finds NYPD force complaints way up under Mayor Adams
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 24, 2025
Modified Sep 25, 2025
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Free Agents Limited / Getty Images
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 24, 2025
Modified Sep 25, 2025
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Complaints filed against NYPD officers for excessive or unnecessary force jumped by more than 50% since the first year of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, largely in Black and Latino precincts, according to a new report released Tuesday by city Comptroller Brad Lander.
The report reviewed force complaints filed with the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, legal settlements and precinct demographics in order to identify precinct-level and department-wide trends. The analysis found complaints were submitted to CCRB 3,700 times in 2022, Adams' first year in office, and increased to more than 5,500 in 2023 and 5,600 in 2024.
The report also argued for precinct-level oversight to curb potential abuses. City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak criticized the report as full of inaccurate data and said the jumps could be explained by both an expansion in the review board’s authority and the administration putting more cops on the streets to address safety.
But the expansion of the CCRB’s authority did not affect excessive-force complaints, according to an agency press release at the time. Rather, it gave the board the power to investigate racial profiling, body-worn camera misuse, self-initiated complaints and boost transparency for the public.
An NYPD spokesperson said in a statement that ensuring compliance and preventing excessive force are fundamental to the department's mission. The CCRB substantiated around 5% of use-of-force allegations in 2023 and 2024, the spokesperson added.
Lander’s report comes the same week the city Department of Investigation acknowledged it is probing deaths in NYPD custody and just days after Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch served charges on officers who fatally shot a 19-year-old during a mental health crisis at his Queens home.
The report credits recent developments at the NYPD to address officer misconduct, but also notes Tisch overruled a departmental judge’s recommendation that Lt. Jonathan Rivera be fired for shooting an unarmed man during a Bronx traffic stop.
Discipline of officers is an important component of accountability, yet “equally important are the proactive steps the NYPD takes to prevent excessive or unnecessary use of force in the first place, through measures such as training, supervision, and early intervention,” Lander’s office wrote in a summary of the report.
The report found four precincts with the most complaints in the last three years — the 40th, 44th, 73rd and 75th, together making up portions of East New York and Cypress Hills in Brooklyn and Mott Haven, Melrose, Concourse and Highbridge the Bronx. Those precincts each had more than 100 excessive-force complaints in that period. More than 85% of residents in those precincts are Black or Latino, and all 10 precincts with the most force complaints were majority Black or Latino, according to the comptroller's office.
In the fiscal year that ended this summer, “police action” claims were the most common tort claims against the city, with more than 6,000 claims filed and $113 million in settlements, the report found.
“Our goal must be to prevent misconduct before it happens — rather than leaving communities to pay the price in harm, trauma and costly settlements after the fact,” said Lander, who challenged Adams in the Democratic mayoral primary and cross-endorsed its winner, Zohran Mamdani.
The comptroller’s office said the NYPD’s early intervention system, which aims to curb problematic policing practices without disciplining officers, is not doing enough to detect precinct and department-wide trends by analyzing lawsuits and filed claims, which the inspector general for the NYPD recommended in 2018. Lander's office recommended the department go beyond flagging individual officers for intervention and implement precinct-level analysis.
His office also recommended targeting high-risk precincts with use-of-force training and reforms and increasing transparency and accountability through quarterly public reports on department-wide misconduct.
But Brad Weekes, an NYPD spokesperson, said the department already addresses the Comptroller's first recommendation with its ComplianceStat meetings — where precinct commanding officers present weekly in front of senior NYPD heads regarding their discipline process — even though that process isn't mentioned in the report.
“The NYPD uses ComplianceStat to proactively engage commanding officers to answer and explain use-of-force incidents across their precinct, such as possible trends and patterns,” Weeks said.
Mamelak, Adams' spokesperson, said the administration takes CCRB complaints seriously.
“The Adams administration remains committed to providing communities the police presence they want and deserve, which means New Yorkers are inevitably having more interactions with law enforcement,” she said. “These factors have predictably led to an increase in CCRB complaints, every single one of which we take seriously.”
Mamelak said so far this year, 78% of complaints substantiated by the CCRB have resulted in disciplinary action by the police commissioner.
Adams' office did not say whether it will implement any of the changes recommended by Lander’s report.
This story has been updated to include a statement from NYPD spokesperson Brad Weekes, and to correct the spelling of his name.
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Catalina Gonella
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