Summonses skyrocket under Adams administration, report finds
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A recent spike in civil and criminal summonses coincided with the beginning of the Adams administration, according to a new report. File photo by Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By Ryan Schwach
Criminal and civil court summonses in New York City skyrocketed since Mayor Eric Adams took office and disproportionately affected on Black, brown and underserved communities in Queens and other boroughs, according to two new reports.
The reports from the CUNY John Jay Data for Collaborative Justice, concluded that both types of summonses for small crimes that didn’t warrant an arrest took a massive jump in March 2022, two months after Adams took office and were particularly pronounced in majority Black or brown populations.
According to the dual reports, criminal summonses increased by 62 percent from 2021 to 2022, after taking a 90 percent decline in the years prior, and civil summons nearly quadrupled over the same period.
The report showed that from 2013 to 2022, criminal court summonses dropped a full 90 percent – from 375,707 to 36,621. However, in 2022, that number jumped back up from 22,603 to 36,621 – or by 62 percent.
The spike began in March of 2022, just around two months after the Adams administration took office.
Public consumption of alcohol accounted for 8,757 of those summonses, or around 24 percent of the total. Other common charges included disorderly conduct and transit violations.
Before cannabis legalization in 2022, marjuana possession made up for a large number of summonses.
But despite the increase in criminal summonses few actually made it to conviction.
Only 9 percent of the criminal summonses issued in 2022 resulted in a conviction. Straight dismissals accounted for 63 percent, with 28 percent receiving an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. The report argued that those numbers are indicative of a lack of accountability in criminal summonses and a “process is punishment” effect.
The numbers were similar for civil summonses.
According to the report, the NYPD issued 27,673 civil summonses in 2022 – nearly four times the total in 2021.
Around 84 percent of those summonses however were for $25 or less, and 83 percent of them were for public alcohol consumption.
Racial disparities persist in civil summonses
Some of the more striking numbers in the report are shown through the racial disparities in who is getting summonses.
From 2020 to 2022, the NYPD issued over 85 percent of criminal summonses to Black or Hispanic people, who combine for 52 percent of NYC’s population. Relative to their numbers in the general population, police issued summonses at a rate 8.9 times higher for Black people than white people in 2020, increasing to 11.4 times higher in 2022, the report says.
With civil summonses, Hispanic New Yorkers accounted for more than half – 53 percent – of all civil summonses, while only making up for 29 percent of the population.
However, the rate of racial disparity in civil summonses have declined in 2019.
In 2022, police issued civil summonses at a rate 1.9 times higher for Black people than white people, compared to 3.8 times higher in 2019. The Hispanic-white disparity fell slightly from 4 to 3.6.
Many of the racial disparities were evident when looking at specific neighborhoods and ZIP codes with high Black and brown populations and populations with higher rates of low income residents.
The report shows that 60 percent of criminal summonses were issued to people living in ZIP
codes whose residents averaged below the median household income, and within those low earning ZIP codes, 97 percent of summonses went to Black or brown people.
With civil summonses, 34 percent of 2022’s summonses were issued in ZIP codes within the bottom quintile of household median incomes in the city.
In Queens, the 11368 ZIP code which covers most of Corona, had by far the most and highest rate of criminal summonses of any in the city.
In 2022, there were 1,030 summons issued there, the only ZIP code citywide over 1,000 summons. Corona’s numbers were similar when it came to civil penalties.
A return to old?
The policing of smaller, quality of life crimes outlined in the reports harken back to policies more than two decades ago, when former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s NYPD popularized “broken windows theory” policing. The theory claims that the policing of lower level crimes and general disorder will lead to a reduction in higher level crimes. The practices of the policing strategy largely came to an end during Bill de Blasio’s administration and after one of its most controversial strategies – stop and frisk – was found to be unconstitutional.
Gina Mitchell, the attorney-in-charge for Law Reform and Policy at Queens Defenders, said she sees similarities in the Adams’ NYPD when compared to Giuliani’s.
“I think that data like this demonstrates a return to broken windows policing, which is applied in a very discriminatory fashion,” Mitchell told the Eagle over the phone on Monday.
“I just think that it's obviously tracking with his administration because of the stark increase in 2022,” she added, calling the former-police captain mayor “notoriously pro-law enforcement.”
Mitchell said that reports like ones from John Jay show that intentional or not, low-level enforcement often disproportionately affects people of color.
“I think the importance of reports like this is that the data speaks volumes, and whether it's individual officers, whether it's pattern in practice…whether it's intentional or not, these types of reports are really, really important in exposing the reality of how low-level enforcement and hyper-policing in particular communities is so damaging,” she said. “Because apart from anything else, it is hugely damaging to the relationship that Black and brown communities have with the police.”
Mitchell says the outcome of policies are not surprising, and echoed aspects of the report which point out that although there has been a shift in recent years from criminal to civil punishments, those low-level civil punishments are still harmful.
“In one respect it is good because you think it's funneling people out of the criminal legal system,” she said. “But I think the other piece of this is to understand that they're often penalty-without-punishment types of ticket summonses, so it's not that the penalty is going to be overwhelming, but you've had to come to court, take the day off, come and sit often all even if the summons is ultimately dismissed.”
In response to the report’s findings, City Hall reiterated some of the mayor’s most repeated talking points.
“Crime is down and jobs are up,” a spokesperson said. “Mayor Adams has been clear that addressing quality-of-life concerns is an important tool in preventing violent crimes from occurring and ensuring that New Yorkers truly feel safe in their communities. While there is always more work to be done, our officers are more focused and engaged in their communities than ever. The NYPD deploys our officers where crime is reported – in response to community complaints and will continue to address these conditions as the public demands and expects we should.”
In a response, the NYPD said there is “still more work to be done.”
“Fully committed to every aspect of our public safety mission, the men and women of the NYPD pride themselves on being responsive to all the people we serve,” DCPI said in a statement. “New Yorkers understand that public safety is a shared responsibility, and they realize that their incredibly valid quality-of-life concerns often prove to be precursors to violence in their neighborhoods. Those concerns are of paramount importance to the people who live in, work in, and visit all corners of our city – just as they are to the police officers who protect those communities. As in years past, the NYPD focused its efforts where quality-of-life concerns and complaints of violence were reported and, in 2023, our officers affected 20 percent more arrests and issued a combined 75 percent more OATH and criminal court summonses than the previous year. Increases in community complaints are expected to result in increases in police-public interactions and, logically, increases in enforcement. Much less-quantifiable are officers’ use of discretion and even their mere uniformed presence at locations – two common realities that potentially prevent crimes and quality-of-life offenses from ever occurring.”
“There’s still work to be done, but our officers are more engaged and focused than ever,” the department added. “NYPD police officers are deployed to locations where crime has been reported or community concerns have been lodged – and enforcement is conducted impartially.”
