A federal judge has allowed the lawsuit of a prominent NYPD critic who alleges police officials leaked details of her sexual assault to move forward, bucking the city’s attempts to have the case tossed.

In a decision last month, U.S. District Judge Frederic Block sided with advocate Dana Rachlin on several counts, allowing her lawsuit to proceed with allegations that the police department allows untraceable “ghost access” to sensitive case files, including records on the 2017 sexual assault she reported to the NYPD. 

Rachlin, who once had close ties to high-ranking NYPD officials including former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, and worked closely with officers at several Brooklyn precincts, has spent the past two years locked in a bitter legal fight with the city.

Her suit names a number of former NYPD officials who gained prominence during the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, including Maddrey, Kaz Daughtry, who later rose to the positions of deputy police commissioner and deputy mayor, and John Chell, another top official who later was appointed chief of department.

“I survived an assault only to be retraumatized by NYPD members using private information to retaliate against me for speaking critically about police brutality,” Rachlin told The City Reporter. 

In a lengthy response to Rachlin’s amended complaint filed on Aug. 3, city Corporation Counsel Steven Banks, a Mamdani appointee, denied Rachlin’s allegations and everything related to purported “ghost access” to NYPD files. An NYPD spokesperson didn’t return multiple requests for comment. Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesperson for the Law Department, declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

Rachlin and the city’s lawyers are due back in court Sept. 30. 

Former Friends

For several years before her falling out with the NYPD, Rachlin had worked inside Brooklyn precincts with her nonprofit, NYC Together, targeting neighborhood youth with the goal of diverting them from the criminal justice system while mending strained police-community relationships. 

When Rachlin was sexually assaulted in 2017 after a gala for her nonprofit, Maddrey, then an assistant chief leading the NYPD’s Brooklyn North command, met her at the hospital and persuaded the activist to file a police report, her suit says. Rachlin alleges Maddrey assigned Daughtry, who was then a detective, to personally investigate the assault. 

Only a handful of officers knew of the incident. Rachlin initially participated in a “controlled call,” where investigators had her phone the alleged assailant on a recorded line, according to NYPD records she obtained that were viewed by The City Reporter. She later decided not to proceed with the investigation, fearing a drawn-out legal process. 

Later, Rachlin’s relationship with the NYPD soured as she grew increasingly critical of what she saw as heavy-handed policing methods in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests.

That disagreement came to a head over the leadership of Deputy Inspector Craig Edelman, who commanded Brownsville’s 73rd Precinct, where Rachlin often worked. Edelman’s tactics were catapulted into the nationwide spotlight after an officer shoved a female protester to the ground, smashing her head on the sidewalk, during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, while he stood by and watched.

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As public pressure mounted on then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to take action, Edelman was transferred to a Gun Violence Suppression Unit.

Maddrey had warned Rachlin in a text message that there would be “a lot of blow back from this,” as many within the department linked her to the campaign to oust Edelman, according to text messages previously reviewed by The City Reporter. 

Rachlin was soon barred from entering precinct station houses where she had previously worked with youth, and her lawsuit alleges she received a message through a subordinate of then-Deputy Chief John Chell that top officials could “humiliate her at any time.” 

In the months that followed Edelman’s reassignment, Rachlin charges, she learned of rumors that she had falsely reported a rape. Anonymous letters were distributed inside a secure locker room at the 61st Precinct station house in Sheepshead Bay, where she had worked closely with police officers and youth, and mailed to an assistant chief in the Brooklyn North command, according to her complaint. 

In her original suit, which The City Reporter covered in 2024, Rachlin posited that a member of the NYPD had reviewed her 2017 sexual assault complaint, as the anonymous letters contained confidential information about the investigation.

But in the years since, Rachlin and her attorneys obtained a record of the “access log” to that sexual assault complaint through a Freedom of Information lawsuit. 

‘Immutable’ Logs

NYPD policy requires the department to maintain “immutable audit logs” any time its case management system is queried, and all files are password protected to assure they are “used for legitimate law enforcement purposes or other official business of the NYPD.” The suit points to examples where police officers have misused access to these databases to get information on romantic partners, business associates, or neighbors.

The access log in Rachlin’s case, reviewed by The City Reporter, showed dozens of instances in which officers on the Special Victims Unit, and later from various oversight units, reviewed her case. 

But to Rachlin’s surprise, the log didn’t include the name of a high-ranking officer in Greenpoint’s 94th Precinct, who she watched access her file when she requested a copy of it back in 2017.

Rachlin and her attorney say they were then informed by a law enforcement source investigating Rachlin’s claims that NYPD systems allow for “ghost access” or “no-peek access” to the case management system. They laid out their allegations about “ghost access” in an amended lawsuit filed in April. 

“Ghost access offers cover for individuals looking to retaliate against critics and whistleblowers, stalk victims of domestic violence, curry political favor, serve as mercenaries for ICE, interfere with investigations, or carry out personal vendettas,” said MK Kaishian, Rachlin’s attorney. 

Rachlin’s amended lawsuit seeks to force the NYPD to end the alleged “ghost access” and establish a policy to restrict access to sensitive information. She is using what’s called a Monell claim, which allows a person to hold a government agency or municipality accountable for a particular policy that violates constitutional rights.

City attorneys in March moved to stop representing Maddrey in the case, saying that an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded the NYPD’s former top uniformed official had violated policy by failing to report Rachlin’s comments when she initially described rumors about her sexual assault spreading within the department.

Once one of the most powerful members of the NYPD, Maddrey resigned in late 2024, following allegations from a subordinate that he coerced her into giving him sexual favors in exchange for overtime pay. His home has since been raided twice by federal agents, though he has not been charged with any crimes. 

Maddrey sued the city in June for refusing to pay his attorney fees. His attorney didn’t return a request for comment.

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Brian Kendall was 16 when Brooklyn detectives arrested him for a fatal shooting outside a Flatbush video game parlor, despite eyewitnesses describing an older, heavier gunman and telling police the teenager wasn’t the shooter.

Thirty-eight years later — after his murder conviction was overturned when prosecutors concluded he was “likely innocent” — Kendall is suing New York City, alleging detectives fabricated evidence, manipulated witnesses and hid exculpatory information that sent him to prison before he was deported to Guyana.

“The suit is for the NYPD and district attorney to be held accountable,” Kendall, 55, told The City Reporter. “Back in the ‘80s there was a lot of misconduct. This was a practice happening all over.” 

About a week after the Feb. 24, 1988, shooting, police took Kendall from his parents’ Flatbush apartment in handcuffs. They said two eyewitnesses identified him as the gunman and charged him with the murder of 20-year-old Raphael Reyes, who was fatally shot inside the building on Cortelyou Road.

The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn federal court, says detectives with the NYPD’s Brooklyn South Homicide Squad ignored eyewitness accounts that contradicted their theory of the case. Instead, they built a murder prosecution around manipulated witness statements and unreliable identifications, according to the suit. 

“We’ll review the case and respond in the litigation,” said city Law Department spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci. 

Kendall is seeking damages from the city, a former detective, and the estates of two case detectives who have since passed away. The lawsuit does not seek a specific dollar amount. 

On July 19, 1989, Kendall pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter after his attorney warned he risked a far harsher sentence if he went to trial. He was sentenced on Aug. 7, 1989, to 8⅓ to 25 years in prison. After serving more than 16 years, he was paroled on Dec. 20, 2004, and deported to his native Guyana just over a month later, on Jan. 22, 2005.

According to the lawsuit, witnesses consistently described the shooter as a short, heavyset middle-aged man. Kendall was a skinny 16-year-old. One witness told police the gunman remained inside the Game Room while Kendall had been playing video games. 

The lawsuit also alleges detectives used suggestive photo arrays until witnesses identified Kendall, withheld exculpatory witness statements from prosecutors and defense lawyers, relied on testimony that changed repeatedly after police interviews and pressured Kendall into falsely confessing by telling him he could go home if he admitted involvement.

“I thought it was a big mistake that they would correct,” Kendall told The City Reporter. 

In 2022, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit reopened the case after reinvestigating the evidence. Prosecutors ultimately concluded Kendall was “likely innocent,” citing eyewitness accounts that had been overlooked, unreliable witness testimony and evidence that had never been disclosed to the defense. 

A judge vacated his conviction and dismissed the indictment.

Kendall and his legal team argued that he was never given a fair chance by detectives and the prosecutor handling the case. 

Inside the police precinct, officers put him in a lineup and refused to let him call a lawyer, according to his account. 

His family hired a private attorney, Harry Dusenberry, who interviewed at least five people inside the game room at the time. They all said Kendall had nothing to do with the murder, according to the 35-page CRU report. 

Many of the same people spoke to prosecutors at the time, the report said. 

The case was before a judge, Francis Egitto, who had a reputation of doling out maximum sentences. 

Dusenberry, in turn, told the family that it would be “suicide” for Kendall to proceed to trial where he would almost surely be convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life, according to the CRU report. 

“I had no choice,” Kendall remembered, adding that he was never told he’d be deported at the end of his sentence. 

Kendall, who had been a legal permanent U.S. resident, served 16 years and eight months in prison before he was released in 2004. He was deported to Guyana, where he was born, the following year. 

During his time in prison, Kendall’s mother and older sister both passed away. 

The lawsuit says the detectives’ conduct reflected broader NYPD customs and practices that tolerated coercive interrogations, suggestive eyewitness identification procedures and failures to disclose exculpatory evidence.

“Brian Kendall lost decades of his life because law enforcement built a case against him instead of following the evidence,” said Julia P. Kuan, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “He spent years in prison, was deported from the country he called home and separated from his family. This lawsuit is about holding those responsible accountable.”

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Genaro watched as four police officers crowded out of the elevator, their boots thudding through the narrow hallway of the apartment building where he lives with his parents and brother, in Flushing, Queens. The officer in front carried a shield that blocked her from head to knees, as if she were facing down a riot, though Genaro was alone. 

He tried to explain that this wasn’t what his family needed. He’d called 911 to ask for an ambulance for his older brother Steven, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Steven had been agitated and moody for weeks, not sleeping and smoking too much marijuana. Earlier that evening, he’d started an argument with their father, yelling and pounding on a kitchen cabinet.

When things like this had happened before, Genaro, who was 20 years old when the police came, tried to lay low in his room and focus on his homework. But that night, in October 2024, he felt fed up. He walked into the kitchen and told Steven not to disrespect their father. Steven got angrier and knocked over the family’s TV, which shattered on the floor. Genaro’s temper snapped, and he punched Steven in the face.

Their mother, Gloria, who barely comes to Steven’s shoulder, stepped between her sons and told Genaro to do what doctors and social workers had always instructed if Steven was in a crisis: Call 911 and ask for an ambulance to take him to the hospital. (Gloria asked to be identified by her first name to protect the family’s privacy. Genaro and Steven are middle names.)

By the time Genaro led the police into the apartment, Steven was sitting on the sofa, sobbing like a child. His parents assumed that soon, someone would lead him downstairs to an ambulance.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, a police supervisor from the 109th Precinct showed up and started asking questions — not about whether Steven was okay, but who had done what to whom; who had broken what. “He had like a really bad attitude. Everything just got escalated,” Genaro said. 

The supervisor told his officers to put Genaro and Steven in handcuffs. They were both under arrest — Genaro for assault; Steven because of the broken TV. Genaro remembers the officer nearest him asking if they could do the handcuffing outside, where Gloria wouldn’t have to watch. The supervisor said no. Gloria started to scream and bang on the table, “like her heart was breaking,” Genaro said.

Gloria, who doesn’t speak fluent English, remembers pleading with a Spanish-speaking officer. Genaro was such a good kid; he’d never been in trouble. And Steven, her vulnerable, unpredictable son — what would happen to him in jail? 

“How is it possible that this is happening right now?” she asked. “We were asking for help. We were not asking for the police to come.”

Broken Promises

The New York Police Department responds to upwards of 149,000 mental health emergency calls each year.

In the worst-case scenarios — the ones that make news — the person in crisis ends up dead, as has happened at least 24 times since 2015. 

But even when everything goes according to plan, police encounters can cause irreparable harm. People in crisis end up in jail. They regularly get handcuffed, forced onto gurneys, strapped down and injected with sedatives against their will. 

Many describe it as like being kidnapped: Their dignity is snatched away, their autonomy erased. They feel degraded. They are terrified that it will happen again.

It is hard to find an expert who argues that sending cops or hauling people to ERs is a good way to respond to most mental health emergencies. Police are not trained as mental health providers; hospital psychiatric units are usually full and admissions criteria are narrow. Once people in crisis get to the hospital, they are nearly always sent away with a referral to an outpatient clinic — which will also likely be full, with a waitlist. Researchers consistently find that sending mental health teams to respond to emergencies is safer, cheaper and more effective than sending police.

For years, officials across the city and state have promised to build better, more humane ways to respond to people in crisis.

For years, however, those promises have been broken.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said in 2022 she would fund intensive, street-based programs to work with people at highest risk of landing in hospitals or jails. Those programs have waitlists of hundreds. 

A succession of New York City mayors promised to deploy mobile crisis teams to deescalate emergencies. The teams are so underfunded and understaffed that families sometimes wait days for them to show up.

In 2021, the city launched B-HEARD, a pilot program that sends mental health workers and EMTs, instead of police, to respond to 911 calls. Each mayor since has promised to expand the program across the city. And yet, five years after its launch, B-HEARD teams respond to fewer than 7% of citywide mental health emergency calls made to 911.

The current mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has made even bigger promises than his predecessors, campaigning on a plan to triple the size of the mobile crisis program, grow B-HEARD so big that many neighborhoods have multiple teams, and create a new, $1.1 billion city agency to oversee an “unprecedented City investment in mental health services.”

Six months into the Mamdani administration, however, those reforms are nowhere to be seen. After police shot 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty, who was holding a knife during a mental health crisis in January, Mamdani took the comparatively small step of opening a new Office of Community Safety, with a budget of only $260 million, to oversee not only B-HEARD but violence prevention, domestic violence and other programs. The city budget, adopted June 30, includes no new money for B-HEARD, according to Sam Raskin, a Mamdani spokesperson.

“The Mamdani administration is committed to strengthening and expanding B-HEARD,” Raskin wrote in an emailed statement. “When New Yorkers are experiencing behavioral health crises, they should be met with trained health professionals who can respond appropriately and connect them to ongoing care.” 

‘We’re Alone’

After Steven and Genaro were arrested, police locked them in holding cells at their local precinct. Steven’s stomach hurt so badly from anxiety that he was transferred to Queens Hospital Center, where he spent the night shackled to a bed with a police officer watching him. Hospital staff prescribed medicine for his stomach pain but no one gave him a psychiatric evaluation or treatment.

His parents, worried sick, brought his psychiatric medication to the precinct, but officers turned them away. By the time he was arraigned and released, two days after his arrest, Steven was exhausted, afraid and confused.

At home, the fear only closed in tighter. Growing up, it had seemed to Steven that his horizons were infinite. He was a soccer player, tall and handsome with close-cropped black hair and big, gentle eyes. At 19, he was recruited to play for a professional team in the Dominican Republic, the Delfinas del Este. But while he was there, his luck broke. His best friend died, and he had knee surgery and was cut from the team. 

After he came home, it was like his life had snapped shut. He felt like a failure, and it seemed like other people were looking at him and thinking the same thing. Steven started hearing voices. He couldn’t relax, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t go outside. He smoked weed to slow down his mind but it made him irritable and aggressive.

His parents, contending with the relentless, stagnant grief of watching their child disappear inside a stranger, rearranged their lives so that Steven would never be left alone. Gloria quit her job as a home health attendant so she could go with him to his psychiatry and therapy appointments. 

But after the arrest, Steven stopped wanting to leave the apartment at all. News footage played over and over in his mind of people being killed by police. He was scared when the doorbell rang. It seemed that police cars were slowing down when they drove past. He couldn’t shake the dislocating feeling of not really being a person — at least not in the eyes of the police or the people at the hospital or the arraignment court. 

Steven locked himself in his bedroom, “just constantly thinking, ‘Is it really worth the risk, going outside or going to the store?’” he said. 

Meanwhile, in the living room, his family circled around what had become an impossible question: What would they do next time Steven ended up in crisis?

They knew they’d never call 911 again, but there seemed to be nowhere else to turn. “We’re searching, searching, searching,” Steven’s father said, but “we’re alone.” 

Which is why Gloria was surprised, a few weeks after her sons’ arrest, to get a call with an unsolicited offer of help from an activist named Peggy Herrera.

Unheard

Peggy became an unexpectedly public figure in the world of mental health advocacy in 2019, after she called 911 to ask for an ambulance. Her 21-year-old son, Justin, was having a ferocious panic attack, breaking things and threatening to kill himself.

By the time cops arrived, Peggy was locked out of her apartment and Justin — terrified of being arrested — refused to come outside. Police wanted to break down the door, but Peggy stood in front of it. Body camera footage, which aired on local news at the time, shows what happened next: Three cops push Peggy to her knees and cuff her hands behind her back. When Justin comes outside to help his mom, they take him face-down on the sidewalk before EMTs strap him to a gurney. Peggy’s voice is raw, screaming, “Leave my son alone!”

In 2021, Justin filed a complaint against the city that, over several years, grew into an ongoing class-action lawsuit with the potential to fundamentally change how New York responds to mental health emergencies. Peggy became an activist, working to keep other people with mental health problems away from cops and out of jail. “People have an illness or they have trauma and what we do is criminalize them and put them in handcuffs,” she said. “They deserve to be treated like human beings.” 

There was a moment when it seemed like city officials — along with much of the rest of the country — were listening. In September 2020, amid nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, outrage erupted in Rochester, New York, over body camera footage of a Black man named Daniel Prude, who was forcibly hooded and pinned to the ground by police after his family called 911 for help during an episode of psychosis. He asphyxiated and later died.

“I placed a phone call to get my brother help, not to have my brother lynched,” Daniel’s brother Joe Prude told the press.

As activists called to defund the police, dozens of cities sent delegates to study a 30-year-old program called CAHOOTS, in Eugene, Oregon, that trained EMTs and crisis workers — most of whom had experienced mental illness themselves — to respond to emergencies. Until the program lost funding in 2025, CAHOOTS teams handled about 20% of Eugene’s 911 calls, saving the city millions of dollars a year without a serious injury or fatality. After Prude’s death, nearly 100 new alternative crisis response programs cropped up across the country.

New York City rolled out B-HEARD, starting with a pilot program in three police precincts in Harlem. The goal, officials said, was to get people into voluntary, community-based services, avoid police encounters, and stop the revolving door of the emergency room.

It wasn’t long, however, before political momentum swung back towards policing and forced hospitalizations. As shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic lifted, New Yorkers saw a spike in crime and an increase of visibly mentally ill people on the street. In 2022, a 40-year-old woman named Michelle Go was pushed to her death in front of a subway train by a man with a long history of psychiatric hospitalizations. 

Then-Mayor Eric Adams instructed police to take more people to ERs against their will. Gov. Hochul followed suit, making it easier for hospitals to forcibly commit patients to psychiatric wards. 

Meanwhile the expansion of B-HEARD stalled out. The program currently operates in fewer than 40% of the city’s police precincts, responding during limited hours to a remarkably narrow range of 911 calls. Even if a B-HEARD team had been available in Steven’s neighborhood, he would likely have been found ineligible. Like most cities with similar programs, B-HEARD screens out incidents involving weapons or violence, according to the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. In practice, however, dispatchers rely on an unusually broad definition of violence — including yelling or property damage. 

If a person is “banging on a car or they’re destroying items in the house, that would trigger a police response,” Assistant Chief Ebony Washington testified at a 2024 City Council hearing.

To Peggy and other advocates, the failure to expand and invest in B-HEARD is a betrayal. “What’s the point if it doesn’t get to the families who need it?” What people in crisis need, she said, is “trained peers: people who’ve been through it and know how to help you.”

So when Peggy heard about a Spanish-speaking mom whose two sons faced criminal charges after a mental health emergency, she decided to help them fight in court.

‘Don’t take it!’

Early on the morning of his first hearing, Steven and his parents sat in an underground room of the Queens Criminal Court. Dozens of defendants surrounded them, waiting in a swampy atmosphere of tedium and fear to be called before a judge. Public defenders bustled in and out with stacks of folders, each representing a client they had likely never met.

When Steven’s lawyer arrived, she called him into a hallway to explain what was about to happen: He was facing a charge of disorderly conduct, she said, but the prosecutor was willing to offer him an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal. 

ACDs are common, in part, because they are efficient for lawyers and judges. If Steven stayed out of trouble for 12 months, the charges would be dropped. ACDs can pose liabilities for defendants, though, since their arrests continue to show up in immigration cases. If they are arrested again, they stand to face two sets of charges. 

Steven’s lawyer didn’t explain that he had the option to fight the charge against him.

As Steven and his parents filed back into the courtroom, Gloria texted Peggy, trying to understand what Steven had just agreed to. Peggy — stuck in traffic on the Jackie Robinson Parkway — sent vehement replies: 

“Don’t take it!” 

“You are going to fight these charges!” 

“He did nothing wrong!” 

Once Peggy arrived, the attorney acknowledged that Steven could ask for a trial instead of accepting the ACD. He was called to the bench, and the judge set a date for another hearing.

Genaro’s court date was the following day. Peggy coached him ahead of time to tell his public defender that he wanted a trial — not an ACD or any other deal. But he was called to the bench without even a word with his lawyer.

Prosecutor and defender conducted rapid-fire negotiations and, in less than two minutes, Genaro found himself accepting a one-year ACD. 

“I didn’t really know what else to do,” he said afterward.

‘A Pain in the Ass’

With Steven’s next court date coming up and the ACD hanging over Genaro’s head, Peggy didn’t have to go far to find them a legal adviser: Her brother was happy to help.

Victor Herrera is small, pointy-featured and argumentative. In the 1980s, he found legal codes and grievance procedures the way some people find religion: inside Attica prison, where he was notorious for filing complaints against guards, he said. People have to listen when you’re “a pain in the ass.” 

After he got out, Victor ended up in the New York City homeless shelter system, where the atmosphere seemed as despotic and deliberately humiliating as prison. He started filing complaints about drug use and missing property — being a pain in the ass.

In response, Victor said in a 2016 lawsuit, shelter staff followed what he characterized as a deliberate practice inside city homeless shelters to silence difficult residents: They called 911 to report him as an “emotionally disturbed person.”

Nine times between 2014 and 2016, police and EMTs put Victor in handcuffs and strapped him to a gurney. At least once, officers slammed him against a wall and put him in a chokehold, according to his legal filings. Five times, he was injected with sedatives or antipsychotics against his will. He tried to tell police and doctors that he wasn’t experiencing a mental health crisis, he said, but when someone in a uniform says you’re crazy, nobody else is going to listen to you. “You’re dismissed, you’re dismissed, you’re dismissed,” Victor said. 

Within a year, New York City paid Victor a financial settlement on behalf of its homeless services agency, public hospitals, the NYPD and the fire department. Two private shelter operators soon followed. The settlements don’t include admissions of guilt but Victor keeps photocopies of the checks. They’re proof, when he needs it, that he got heard.

The Department of Social Services did not respond to requests for comment.

After the lawsuit, Victor became one of the first clients of a city-funded Intensive Mobile Treatment program, which helped him get an apartment, encouraged him to become an advocate, and provided treatment for his depression and PTSD. A decade later, he still has flashbacks to being strapped down and sedated. “It can happen anywhere,” he said. “I just relive all that.” 

When it happens, he goes home and climbs into bed with his cats, Boots and Socks. “I start questioning whether I’m still valid to be living,” he said. “The most traumatic, for me, was going to a hospital and not being heard.” 

What gets him out of bed is the knowledge that people are counting on him.

‘We Have to Help Each Other’

By the time Steven had his second court date, in February 2025, the Trump administration had allowed immigration agents into city courthouses. Steven’s father, who isn’t a citizen, stood across the street and waited while Victor accompanied Steven to his hearing.

An hour later, they came out with good news: The charges had been dropped and the case was dismissed. Steven’s dad wiped tears from his eyes and shook Victor’s hand.

Victor offered to help Genaro contest his ACD. When he called the public defenders’ office, he was told that they never collected evidence — not even body camera footage of the arrest. (Steven, The City Reporter and MindSite News filed a freedom of information request for the footage in Jan. 2025. As of publication, the NYPD had not provided it, despite multiple appeals. The department also did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

For Peggy and Victor, it was an ugly confirmation that not much had changed. After all the news stories and the promises from officials and politicians, “the system is just not set up for people who struggle with mental health,” Peggy said. “We have to help each other.”

Their best hope might lie in the lawsuit that Peggy’s son Justin set in motion five years ago.

The lawsuit now includes 10 named plaintiffs, though Justin is no longer one of them. He was shot and killed in July 2022, at his own 24th birthday party. The grief still feels like a physical obliteration, Peggy said — like a part of her body was ripped off. But the lawsuit, she said, is part of Justin’s legacy: something he left behind to make the world better. 

In January, city attorneys filed a letter in court indicating that they’re ready to explore a settlement. If that happens, the terms could include a detailed, enforceable plan with a clear timeline to build a citywide, non-police response for New Yorkers in crisis, said Jenny Marashi, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

“Imagine if we could meet people in their most vulnerable moment with compassion instead of force,” Marashi said. 

The blueprints exist for a better solution, she continued. “What you need is a number you can call, where people can come right away, with the discernment to know what you need — which is almost never an emergency room. Ideally those people are led by peers with their own experience” of what it’s like to be on the other side of a mental health call.

“Then imagine there are places to go for help, where people actually wanted to be, designed by people who use the services,” she said. “Think about the people that you know. How many of them have had at least some moment where they just couldn’t handle this freaking super hard life?”

If we imagine we’re creating a system for all of us, it could be a “thread we can follow” — not just to manage emergencies, but toward a reality where New Yorkers treat one another better in the most frightening, vulnerable moments of their lives. 

“We could actually have a more healing and safe world,” Marashi said. “Let’s dream big.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin agreed Tuesday to a $125.8 billion budget, including an additional $175 million for rental help, following tense negotiations in the final days over funding for housing vouchers.

The 11th-hour deal comes on the final day before the budget is due, and was passed hours later by the council with a 45-6 margin.

“We have worked together to usher in a new era of fiscal health for our city,” Mamdani said at a City Hall press conference. 

Menin also praised the “transformative” budget agreement, noting that she and the mayor “have come together in the spirit of collaboration with the shared interest of wanting what is best for our city, and that is the essence of this handshake.” 

Budget negotiations were at a standstill days before the deadline over funding for the city-funded housing voucher program known as CityFHEPS, as well as the mayor’s continued lawsuit to stop the program’s expansion. 

As part of the budget deal, the administration agreed to drop its lawsuit, which was filed under former Mayor Eric Adams after the Council voted to expand the program’s eligibility in 2023. 

Under the agreement, the city will create a new rental program to assist more New Yorkers who are currently not eligible for the existing CityFHEPS program, and are facing eviction.

That program will be created under a bill sponsored by Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, who led the charge for more money for CityFHEPS in the budget. 

“This is a historic win for vulnerable New Yorkers — and a turning point in our city’s approach to homelessness,” she said in a statement.

Former Council speaker Christine Quinn, who is now the president and CEO of shelter and supportive housing provider WIN, praised the deal.

“Expanding CityFHEPS will help thousands more individuals and families leave shelter and move into permanent, stable housing, while making smart use of taxpayer dollars,” she said.

Ballooning Costs

CityFHEPS is considered a lifeline to the approximately 67,000 New York households that rely on it to move from shelter into permanent housing. The voucher allows households to pay about a third of their income towards rent. 

But the program’s cost has ballooned at a rate many have warned was unsustainable: from about $26 million in 2019 to almost $1.8 billion in 2025. That’s before the expansion dictated by a 2023 law, which would have made more New Yorkers eligible for the voucher — bringing program costs to over $4 billion by 2030, according to an estimate by the Independent Budget Office.

The Adams administration did not implement that law, and Mamdani continued his legal fight against doing so despite his campaign promise to expand the program.

The current voucher program applied to people in shelters working at least 10 hours weekly but making no more than roughly $31,920 for an individual or $66,000 for a family of four.

The 2023 law would have expanded voucher eligibility to people facing eviction — not just those in shelters — and households earning at a slightly higher income: about $56,700 for an individual and $81,000 for a family of four. 

With the newly negotiated budget, CityFHEPS will apply to New Yorkers at that increased income level, as well as to those facing eviction from rent-stabilized apartments, and those in shelters beyond what the Department of Homeless Services runs — like runaway youth and people displaced by fires or vacate orders.

Robert Desir, Legal Aid Society staff attorney, in a statement lauded the deal that brought the “needless litigation to a close.”

“More New Yorkers will now be able to access the support they need before losing their homes, reaffirming what we’ve long known: investing in rental assistance is both the humane choice and the fiscally responsible one,” he said.

The budget is the first negotiated between Mayor Mamdani and Speaker Menin, and came after help from the state to plug a more than $12 billion deficit.

It also increased funding for Fair Fares by $54 million, which provides discounts on MTA subway and bus rides, and more permanent funding for libraries at $31.7 million. 

Mamdani also announced the creation of a portal to release documents related to the air quality and health impacts after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which will cost more than $34 million next year. Previous mayoral administrations had refused to release the documents, sparking a years-long advocacy campaign that this week criticized the city for continuing its delay.

No New Cops

The budget doesn’t include funding to add 580 additional police officers, despite its inclusion earlier in the mayor’s executive budget. That initial inclusion was protested by elected officials and the Democratic Socialists of America, and diverged from Mamdani’s campaign promise to keep NYPD staffing levels flat. 

The NYPD funding was first reported by the New York Post.

Mamdani said he and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “were able to identify ways to keep the NYPD headcount of the originally authorized 35,000, while also meeting all of our crime-fighting needs, and implementing the new programs that were announced from here this year.” 

Despite some savings, budget experts panned Mamdani’s balancing act.

“The mayor was exactly right: The city has a huge structural budget problem. Unfortunately, this budget fails to solve it,” Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said in a statement.

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Members of the NYPD and the FBI searched several homes of current and former NYPD officials as part of a criminal investigation, according to Commissioner Jessica Tisch and a source familiar with the probe. 

The joint investigation, by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, is looking into bribery allegations that involve Jeffrey Maddrey, the former NYPD Chief of Department under Mayor Eric Adams, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed to The City Reporter. 

The operation targeted the homes of Former Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard and James McCarthy, the current commanding officer of Manhattan South, in addition to several others, the source said. 

Sheppard, who opened a security firm with former Chief of Department John Chell after leaving the NYPD, didn’t return a request for comment right away. McCarthy couldn’t be reached for comment right away. 

The New York Post and NBC 4 first reported on the raids of the top current and former NYPD officials.

Separately, federal agents raided Maddrey’s house Wednesday morning and seized his phone and other devices, a source familiar with the operation said. Federal agents had previously raided Maddrey’s home in January of 2025, and Commissioner Tisch, who had been appointed by Adams in November of 2024, announced his suspension without pay. 

At the time of the raid, he had already announced his resignation, following allegations from a subordinate that he coerced her into sexual favors in exchange for overtime pay.

Maddrey, a close ally of Adams, had been promoted to chief of department, the city’s highest ranking uniformed official, by then Commissioner Keechant Sewell in 2022, despite an Internal Affairs investigation into an altercation with another subordinate he was having a relationship with, who alleged he’d assaulted her in a Queens park. 

In another incident covered extensively by The City Reporter, Maddrey intervened on the behalf of a retired cop who had chased a group of teenagers with a gun in Brownsville in 2022, orchestrating his release. Maddrey was later found to have abused his authority by the Civilian Complaint Review Board. 

Maddrey’s attorney didn’t return a request for comment right away. 

A spokesperson for the NYPD declined a request for additional comment on the raids and pointed to the Commissioner’s remarks on social media. 

Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the Southern District of New York, declined to  return a request for comment. A spokesperson for the FBI didn’t return a request for comment right away.

Asked about the raids at an unrelated press conference Wednesday morning, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Commissioner Tisch “has already shown a real commitment to cracking down on corruption and ensuring that the public servants in the NYPD are held to the highest standards.”

“I’m confident that she will lead us through this process,” he said. 

The raids came the same day as the arrest of Frank Carone, another close ally to former Mayor Adams who served as his chief of staff before leaving to start a lobbying firm. That probe — which comes out of a separate U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York’s Eastern District — is not thought to be related. 

“When I became Police Commissioner, I promised New Yorkers that under my leadership the NYPD would conduct itself with integrity and that there would be a thorough investigation of any claim that members of service failed to meet that standard,” NYPD Commissioner said on X. “This investigation and our actions this morning are part of the ongoing effort to fulfill that commitment and hold the Department to its highest ideals.”

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Knicks fever has overtaken the city. Suburbanites aren’t safe either. Gabrielle, born in New York City, raised on Long Island, and now raising her kids in Westchester, has a severe case — and there’s no question she’ll be at the team’s ticker-tape parade.

To guarantee it, she’s paying $750 to have someone hold her spot in line ahead of Thursday. They’ll be there for her from midnight to 8 a.m., the mother of three told The City Reporter. 

“Obviously I can’t wait overnight and also watch my kids,” three boys ages 4, 7, and 10, Gabrielle said, declining to use her last name due to the sensitive nature of her work at a financial firm.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has projected the NBA championship celebration may be New York City’s largest in history; after a 53-year drought, the “Canyon of Heroes” in the Financial District will be flooded with fans. For the die-hards, they’re saving a spot themselves.

Geraldine Bryant, who lives in the Bronx, was there hours earlier than Gabrielle’s line-sitter. Arriving at the City Hall entry point at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, she said she plans to stake out her spot all night.

“I want the Knicks to see me,” she said, sitting in a foldable lawn chair with a handmade Knicks sign on bright blue poster board.

While the Knicks have never before had a ticker-tape parade, thanks to former Mayor John Lindsay, their 1973 championship was celebrated with a ceremony at City Hall Plaza, drawing about 2,000 fans. Thursday’s parade could see millions. The parades for the Giants (2008 and 2012) and the Yankees (1998, 1999 and 2000) all saw over a million fans, with some estimates as high as 2 to 3 million, according to the Downtown Alliance, an advocacy group servicing Lower Manhattan.

At a little past 5 p.m. Wednesday — more than 17 hours before the parade — serious fans like Bryant had already staked out their front-row spots on the bleachers outside of City Hall, unfolding pillows and rolling out pajamas for an all-night wait.

“Fifty-three years, man, through the ups and downs of the Knicks, and this is my first championship I’ve ever seen,” said Rob Martel, 53, from Winfield Park, New Jersey. “I want to be as close as possible.”

Born the year of the Knicks’ last title, he had brought little more than a chair, a hat and some Gatorade.

“I came less prepared than they did,” he said, nodding toward a pair of brothers nearby, with whom he became fast friends within minutes of sitting on the bleachers. 

Those brothers, Eddie and Justin Leiva, had traveled from Philadelphia by NJ Transit and a Lyft from Penn Station. Eddie, 24, said he has been a fan since birth. “We’re born into this blue and orange forever,” he said, pointing to a Knicks’ hat stitched with the year 2000.

His older brother Justin, 28, a school counselor on summer break, said he had to be here for the occasion. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said. “We like to be the first for everything, if we can.”

Passerbys had been dropping off chips and water for them, he said. “It’s just good vibes all around, man.”

Security and Sacrifices

With the NYPD putting out a laundry list of security measures, banned items, and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch discussing the possibility of turning people away — Gabrielle’s just hoping for the best by the time she gets there Thursday morning.

She asked the line-sitter she hired on Airtasker, an online marketplace, to save three spots, ideally on Broadway and Barclay Street.

A Knicks fan practically since birth, she’s shared her love of the game with her kids. She wants them to make some life-long memories at the parade.

“It’s times like this where New York City shines its brightest,” Gabrielle said. “It’s one of these moments that will be embedded in their memories and last a lifetime.”

At City Hall, other campers on the bleachers traveled hundreds of miles to be there.

Henry Restrepo, 55, flew in from Miami Wednesday morning with his 18-year-old son, Alejandro. Born and raised in Queens, Restrepo has followed the team since 1984.

“I’ve been through a lot of pain and suffering,” he said, remembering the Knicks’ losses to the Rockets in 1994 and the Spurs in 1999. “I cried. I shed a tear. I ain’t ashamed to say that.”

Camping was not the plan, he said, until he saw others doing it and decided spontaneously to camp out for the night. In order to see the players, according to Restrepo, he chose his spot on the bleachers, supposedly on the corner where the players’ motorcade turns toward City Hall.

“I’m not a VIP or a politician, so I can’t be there,” he said. “So this is the next best thing.”

When asked about whether or not he is concerned about being kicked out by law enforcement tonight, Restrepo admitted he is “a little worried,” but hopes “it is worth the risk.” 

Eddie, with his brother Justin, said they are not worried in the slightest —  “I will line up wherever I have to,” they said. They are similarly undaunted by the long wait ahead of them.

“That’s all the Knicks did this year was sacrifice to win the championship, so I think we could sacrifice a little bit of money, a little bit of time, a little bit of sleep,” he said.

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The wheels came off during scenes of violent mayhem that followed the Knicks’ first NBA championship in more than half a century, with rowdies vandalizing MTA buses and torching shuttles used to ferry soccer fans to World Cup games, authorities said Sunday.

The ruckus that resulted in more than 60 arrests, a shooting and four stabbings broke out on Midtown blocks near Madison Square Garden as the Knicks won the NBA Finals nearly 2,000 miles away in Texas by finishing off the San Antonio Spurs in five games.

The rented school buses had been lined up along 42nd Street, which is being used as a bus-only passageway on World Cup match days for travel to NYNJ Stadium. 

The violence flared up after the temporarily renamed stadium, usually known as MetLife, played host to its first match, between Brazil and Morocco earlier in the day. The NYPD said five of the buses were destroyed by being lit on fire, stomped on or being bashed with baseball bats.

Clips posted to social media by FreedomNews.TV show a bus driver pleading “That’s coming out of my check!” at people who slammed the front of a school bus with everything from metal scooters to a stop sign before ripping off its hood.

Another clip from the news service shows firefighters turning their hoses onto a World Cup shuttle bus that was engulfed in flames.

“While we recognize the excitement and pride surrounding the city’s celebration, the vandalism and destruction of property that occurred is unacceptable,” a spokesperson for the NYNJ Host Committee told The City Reporter. “We are grateful that none of our drivers were harmed and commend them for their professionalism throughout these acts of vandalism.”

That was followed by what the MTA said was more than a dozen city buses having their windows, doors and mirrors vandalized, with some tagged with graffiti.

One video clip that was widely circulated on social media showed people in Knicks ballcaps and jerseys kicking in the door at the front of an M42 bus at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue — with the bus operator at the wheel.

John Chiarello, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 said the bus operator was “stuck in the throng of people and forced to endure the door being smashed in and other destruction.”

“Better service planning, especially given the crowds at previous games, could have prevented our member from being trapped in that situation,” Chiarello told The City Reporter. “Management failed to account for a predictable situation and put our members in danger.” 

While the NYPD flagged the “increasingly destructive” through “incredibly reckless and dangerous behavior,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the “vast majority” of New Yorkers “celebrated responsibly and appropriately.”

“There were a few incidents that we saw where people behaved in an unacceptable manner,” Mamdani said Sunday during a WFAN Sports Radio radio appearance. “This is not the kind of conduct we want to see in our city.”

“And I’ve said time and again that as we want New York to celebrate, to do so responsibly is critical because there’s no tolerance for violence.”

The NYPD said a 17-year-old who was shot in Times Square had to be taken to a hospital by police since an ambulance could not cross 43rd Street once it was taken over by crowds. A spokesperson said three people of interest were in custody and that a firearm was recovered following the shooting at 43rd Street and Broadway.

In addition, police said there were multiple slashings or stabbings, along with people who tossed fireworks into crowds and scaled traffic lights and light poles.

Mamdani praised the NYPD’s response to the outbursts, thanking police during an appearance on ABC for “keeping New Yorkers safe over the course of this Finals run.”

In its statement, the NYNJ Host Committee said no passengers were aboard the buses that were torched and said the destruction will have “no impact on transportation services for our remaining FIFA World Cup 2026 matches or fan events.”

“Our focus remains on delivering a safe, reliable, and welcoming transportation experience for the thousands of fans, visitors and residents who will be traveling to NYNJ Stadium.”

The chaos that followed Game Five mirrored some of what followed the Knicks’ Game Four win at Madison Square Garden, when police took 56 people into custody while making 15 arrests.

The aftermath of the previous NBA Finals game included revelers blocking streets, jumping on moving vehicles, tossing glass bottles and stomping on a taxi.

Cabbie Nouredine Bitat, who was yanked out of his cab after Wednesday’s Game Four while the vehicle was stopped at 36th Street and Seventh Avenue, told The City Reporter Friday that his wife in Algeria was in tears when she saw footage of him standing by the trashed taxi.

“No one tried to stop it,” Bitat said tearfully. ““I was surprised, I was shocked, I couldn’t understand what was happening.”

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Since the publication of this story, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and the Bronx rapper French Montana set up a fundraiser for the driver.

Noureddine Bitat went from the end of a 13-hour shift behind the wheel of a yellow cab to being dragged onto the street by a mob in the wake of Wednesday night’s win by the Knicks — then watched helplessly as the taxi was trashed.

The 59-year-old Algerian cabbie became engulfed in the wild scenes that unfolded on the blocks north of Madison Square Garden and between Fifth and Eighth avenues after Game Four of the NBA Finals. That’s when rowdy revelers swarmed the leased 2026 Toyota Sienna as it headed east at 36th Street and Seventh Avenue, shattering its windshield and meter and stomping on its roof and hood.

“I’m here only to make a living,” Bitat told The City Reporter through a translator Friday. “It’s not nice for the fans, in their disappointed spirit, to act like they’re in the jungle and be dangerous for the population.”

The brutalized cabbie’s comments came hours before police arrested more than 60 people in New York City as the Knicks took the NBA championship with a Game 5 win in San Antonio on Saturday night. Vandals destroyed five school buses being used as shuttles to MetLife Stadium for the World Cup, a 17-year-old was shot, several people were slashed or stabbed and 10 NYPD officers were injured as tens of thousands of fans flooded the streets, police officials said.

Cabbie: ‘It Was Very Traumatic’

Occasionally breaking into tears, Bitat struggled to recount in Arabic the mayhem that broke out as fans exited The Garden and merged with crowds in the streets. 

Bitat had been on his way home to Queens after ferrying a passenger he had picked up at LaGuardia Airport to Lower Manhattan.

But he never made it past 36th and 7th, where police stopped vehicles as crowds gathered.

“Too much, too much people,” he said. “They opened the doors, even the trunk, then forced me to come out from the car when one guy grabbed me by the neck.”

Bitat, who suffers from diabetes, spent part of Thursday being checked out at a Queens hospital after fainting while leaving his home. A cabbie for just over two years, he said he now is not sure if he will drive again. 

“I’m thinking of quitting,” he said. “Once I saw the cab, it was very traumatic.”

The encounter showcased an ugly side of the Knicks’ 29-point comeback win over the San Antonio Spurs, with the NYPD taking 56 people into custody, making 14 arrests and blasting the “incredibly reckless and dangerous behavior” that included people jumping onto moving vehicles, breaking into a tractor-tractor and flinging its contents at police, climbing atop traffic lights and trying to overturn Bitat’s taxi.

“I worried they were going to set fire to the car, they tried to tip it over,” he said. “That’s when the cops came.” 

During the chaos, in which he was punched in the head, Bitat said he stood off to the side as he worried about being penalized by the garage that had leased him the Sienna, a new wheelchair-accessible model. He shot video of the damage with his phone.

“They were yelling, ‘Knicks five! Knicks five! Knicks five!” he said.

The head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance credited Bitat for what she called his “very impressive presence of mind” in reacting to the attack.

“In that mob scene, it could have really escalated if he did not keep his cool,” Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “He kept himself alive and safe, which I don’t think everybody can do.”

Midori Valdivia, commissioner and chair of the Taxi & Limousine Commission, said she is incredibly grateful that Bitat was not seriously injured.

“There’s no excuse for the kind of behavior he was subjected to, and anyone with information related to those who committed this incident should reach out to the NYPD immediately,” Valdivia said. “Our TLC drivers are some of the best ambassadors of New York City and should be respected as such.”

Bitat said he does not plan to rejoin the ranks of the city’s nearly 180,000 licensed yellow taxi drivers anytime soon. So he will miss out on the chance to ferry passengers during the World Cup, when more than 1 million visitors are expected to come to New York City for the monthlong tournament that is holding eight games just across the Hudson River in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Desai said the taxi workers association will guide Bitat in filing for workers’ compensation funds that can help him with medical bills. NYTWA also intends to set up an online fundraiser for him.

“That’s so he gets full medical service, including therapy for the trauma and see about other work,” she said.

A video posted to social media by the news agency FreedomNews.TV shows about a dozen people on top of the taxi Bitat was driving, with one man smacking the cab’s busted windshield with a belt while another holds a Palestinian flag.

The taxi workers association wrote in a social media post that it believes “in justice and liberation for all.” 

“This incident has nothing to do with the flag that was waved,” NYTWA posted to X. 

The violence dampened the good feelings that have accompanied the Knicks run, with the team clinching its first NBA championship in more than 50 years on Saturday night.

“All New Yorkers felt like they were part of this one moment and just to see that come crashing down on us is really painful,” Desai said. “The yellow of the cab should not make you a target for this kind of group violence.”

Bitat said he knows next to nothing about basketball, identifying himself instead as a “soccer man.” But he said was aware of the significance of the Knicks’ win.

“We’re all happy that the Knicks made it and that they won their third game,” he said. “But don’t change it to a riot and destroying the public’s things.”

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The officers who veered in front of a dirt-bike rider trying to evade police — a maneuver that ended with the rider dead — violated NYPD guidelines designed to ensure police car chases don’t result in catastrophe, officials have confirmed.

The alleged violations emerged in a report released this week by Attorney General Letitia James on the 2023 death of Samuel Williams, who died after colliding with an unmarked vehicle driven by cops trying to block a group riding illegal dirt bikes and ATVs across the University Heights Bridge from Manhattan to The Bronx.

The attorney general concluded that, while the officers broke departmental rules, their actions did not rise to the level of criminal culpability. As a result, she filed no charges.

James’ report came as a judge ordered the NYPD to release body camera footage and documents from the incident to The City Reporter amid a long-running Freedom of Information lawsuit. A lawyer for Williams’ family blasted the attorney general’s decision not to file charges.

Cops Versus Bikers

As described by the attorney general’s Office of Special Investigation, the May 28, 2023, accident occurred when a caravan of four unmarked police vehicles carrying Community Response Team (CRT) cops saw a group of dirt bikes and ATVs — which are illegal on New York City streets — approaching the University Heights Bridge connecting The Bronx and Manhattan.

Williams, the leader of the group, was popping wheelies as he headed toward the NYPD caravan. The second car in the cop caravan pulled into the oncoming lane to block the riders, and a third cop car behind him did the same.

State investigators determined that Williams was able to swerve around the first police car trying to block him and appeared to be accelerating to try and dodge the second when he crashed into it. He was launched through the air and landed on the street, his leg badly broken. He died the next day; Williams’ death was ruled “accidental,” caused by “blunt injuries” to his legs and damaged blood vessels.

The AG’s report noted that the NYPD’s written policies on vehicle pursuits specifically prohibited members of service from “placing a moving department vehicle in a position to be struck by the pursued vehicle.”

The report also revealed that the NYPD had determined that the actions of Officer Raymond Perez, the cop who steered the vehicle in front of Williams that caused the crash, “were outside department guidelines.” The report did not reveal the specific violation.

A federal lawsuit filed by Williams’ family asserts that the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division (FID) “concluded, at least in part, Perez violated NYPD guidelines.” The suit asserts that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “approved those findings” and it claims Perez “was subsequently disciplined.”

The department has for more than a year blocked The City Reporter’s public records request seeking the investigation’s closing memo. Last week, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, a judge ordered the NYPD to turn over the memo to The City Reporter within the next 90 days.

The NYPD did not respond toquestions about the internal investigation’s finding or whether Perez or Officer Hermes Rodriguez, the other cop who steered his car into oncoming traffic to block Williams, had been disciplined.

The attorney general’s report noted that in February 2025, newly appointed Commissioner Tisch tightened the guidelines even further, barring vehicle pursuits of drivers officers either witnessed or suspected of committing traffic infractions, violations or non-violent misdemeanors.

The AG determined that under those new guidelines, the cops would have had no justification to even pursue Williams, who was riding an illegal dirt bike without a license plate on a city street, because the infraction they witnessed, reckless driving, was a non-violent misdemeanor.

“The actions of the officers who drove the second and third CRT cars across the bridge on May 28, 2023, and into oncoming traffic were deeply troubling,” the attorney general’s office found. “Those actions presented a clear risk to life and limb, and in fact they caused the death of Samuel Williams.”

The AG also “found no evidence that NYPD ever permitted such maneuvers in such circumstances, nor that it ever trained its officers to perform them.” 

At least some members of the Community Response Team had embraced the tactic of veering into oncoming traffic to block illegal dirt bikes and ATVs, despite the fact that it violated NYPD guidelines, the report found.

The team’s supervisor, Lt. Vicente Perez, who was in the car behind Perez’s, told the AG’s investigators that his team had used this tactic “successfully” in the past. He also conceded that “officers were not trained by NYPD to do this maneuver.”

Lawyer: Findings ‘Enough’ for Charges 

On Tuesday, Williams’ family’s attorney, Jaime Santana, castigated the attorney general for failing to charge any of the cops: “Samuel Williams died on a bridge in The Bronx because NYPD officers performed an illegal, untrained maneuver that their own department never authorized. The Attorney General spent three years investigating this — and today told this family that’s not enough. It is enough. It was always enough.”

The CRT came into being in early 2022 after then-Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, announced his plans to crack down on the wave of illegal dirt bikes and ATVs  terrorizing motorists and pedestrians.

The team quickly expanded and began sending out caravans of cops in unmarked sedans to hunt for and shut down these cowboy convoys. A July 2023 examination of 911 data by The City Reporter found that by the summer of 2023, the number of NYPD vehicle pursuits had spiked by 600%, and within a year the attorney general had opened investigations into six fatal CRT-related crashes.

A November 2024 report by the city Office of Inspector General overseeing the NYPD criticized the department’s oversight, finding that “CRT has no written policies and procedures to guide its actions, and no list of specific CRT training required for officers within CRT.”

The inspector general warned that this “lack of transparency with respect to documented policies and procedures for this specialized unit elevates the risk of non-compliance with the law, ethical breaches, and negative policing outcomes.”

Following the death of Williams, the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), substantiated the allegation that Officer Perez had violated use of force  protocols by veering into Williams and recommended a penalty known as “charges,” the most serious sanction available. But the CCRB is barred from discussing the case and the discipline it recommended because Perez’s case is pending in the NYPD’s internal disciplinary system.

Three years after the incident, no administrative trial date has been set.

Since the collision on the University Heights Bridge, Perez has been the subject of seven more CCRB complaints. They include a November 2024 incident in which Perez was found to have performed an unauthorized search of a vehicle, and a May 2024 encounter where CCRB substantiated allegations that Perez failed to provide his business card to the subject of a stop and frisk who requested one. 

While Perez remains assigned to a CRT unit, Officer Rodriguez — the other officer who pulled in front of Williams — was forced to resign after he was charged criminally by the Manhattan District Attorney in August 2024.

DA Alvin Bragg alleged that, two weeks after the incident on the University Heights Bridge, Rodriguez was involved in what appears to have been a CRT vehicle stop in Upper Manhattan. Prosecutors say Rodriguez used a baton to beat the driver and to break the car’s front and rear windshields. The incident was captured by a body-worn camera, and Rodriquez pleaded guilty to three charges, including third-degree assault.

He later participated in 12 anger management sessions, performed eight days of community services and paid $1,190 in restitution. He is barred from reapplying to be a police officer anywhere in New York state.

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The watch party outside Madison Square Garden for Game 4 of the NBA Finals was canceled hours before tipoff after owner James Dolan blamed city officials for requiring additional security — and said Mayor Zohran Mamdani was inexperienced and not a real Knicks fan.

“This is about celebrating the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, at the Mecca of basketball. This is what the mayor’s office and the commissioner’s office is trying to kill, they don’t want the celebration,” Dolan told Craig Carton on WFAN, noting the Garden won’t be putting up screens for the game.

“I can’t tell you why they don’t want the celebration. I’m not sure they know why they don’t want the celebration, but they clearly don’t want it,” he said. 

Dolan, who owns the Knicks and the New York Rangers, said he didn’t think Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “have faith in their own police force.”

“Honestly, the mayor’s office and I’m sorry, the commissioner too — do not have the experience to do this,” he said.

The talk radio interview escalates a war between Dolan and city officials, which increased Tuesday night after the Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. released a statement calling them “party poopers” for heightened security.

Commissioner Tisch said at a press conference Monday that the security perimeters set up for President Donald Trump’s Game 3 visit on Monday would remain up for Game 4 — but it still took Dolan by surprise.

He claimed that it had been the NYPD’s call — not the president’s team — to add airport-style security screenings.

“The Secret Service didn’t demand this stuff, it was NYPD and it was really the commissioner’s office,” Dolan said. “This was the commissioner’s plan all around. She just used the president coming as an excuse to set it up.”

The NYPD, on the contrary, said it established Monday’s traffic-snarling security perimeter “jointly with the Secret Service.”

MSG’s permit for Wednesday’s canceled party was only for between 500 and 999 fans, and the city granted them the space for the highest number requested. Dolan said on the radio that he didn’t think more than 1,000 fans could see the screens Garden management would have set up to watch the game.

And although Trump was roundly booed when he appeared on screens inside MSG on Monday, Dolan praised him, saying he’s a Knicks fan and a “great guy.”

“Having him there was a great honor,” he told the show’s hosts. 

Mayor Mamdani posted on social media to note that the canceled watch party was not his call.

“Mr. Dolan has now decided to cancel the watch party. I know this is breaking hearts across our city,” he said. “Knicks in five.”

Knicks Fans Make the Best of It

By the time the sun had set behind Manhattan on Wednesday, fans still gathered outside Madison Square Garden, which was quarantined with heavy police presence. Hundreds lingered on the sidewalks, in orange and blue — many of whom had traveled hours and learned of the cancellation only after arriving.

Fans were split on whom to blame, and many were determined to make a night of it anyway.

Sofia Corts, 20, traveled four hours from Albany and convinced her roommate to come along. Corts had never followed the Knicks — her boyfriend was the fan — but said she’d watched videos of the fans and wanted to experience it for herself.

“I saw comments saying that New York hasn’t been outside like this in years,” she said. “I wanted to be a part of history.” She found out the party was scrapped about an hour after arriving, and didn’t mind. “I knew people would still show up for the Knicks,” she said.

Cortes was not the only one to have traveled far to witness history. A group of four college friends — Avi Caraballo, Elyn Safar, Kayla Clark and Haneen Akhatib, all 20 — drove two hours from North Bergen County, New Jersey, and the Poconos in Pennsylvania, only to learn the news on the sidewalk.

But where Corts shrugged, they fumed. One started to cry; it would have been her first watch party. Their disappointment curdled into blame. “Do I blame the mayor? Hell, yes,” one tearful member of the group said. “You could have told people the day before.”

Kayla Clark nodded in agreement: “At the end of the day, if the mayor actually cares about the New Yorkers, then he should have let us” party outside the Garden. 

“He loves the Knicks, he’s for the younger people,” Elyn Safar said of Mamdani. “But I guess not.”

Other fans took the cancellation in stride. “They canceled the watch party. I got my own one,” said John Bryant of New Jersey, while watching the game on his phone.

Christopher Hernandez, 25, a Harlem native and lifelong Knicks fan, scoffed over Dolan’s permit for 1,000 fans. “This is a city of like 8 million people,” he said. “That’s not enough.” 

If the canceled party dampened some of the mood, few fans seemed to let it define the night. For Corts, watching “the way people are showing up anyway is inspirational”, much like Knicks’ magical run, she concluded.

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