New York City police officers have pulled over tens of thousands of Black and Latino drivers and searched their vehicles without probable cause, stopping people in those groups at a far higher rate than white drivers around the city, according to a new lawsuit.
The suit, filed on late Wednesday afternoon by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Bronx Defenders, says that of the more than 74,400 vehicles the police searched from Jan. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2025, more than 84 percent of the drivers were Black or Latino while fewer than 4 percent of the drivers searched were white. Fewer white drivers were searched even though they comprise a larger share of people traveling by car, the lawsuit stated.
“There is no explanation for these disparities other than intentional discrimination against Black and Latino drivers by the N.Y.P.D.,” the lawsuit says.
The complaint echoes accusations the organization made in 2008, when it sued the Police Department for its “stop-and-frisk” measures. In 2013, a federal judge agreed that stop-and-frisk policies had violated the constitutional rights of Black and Latino men.
The New York Civil Liberties Union says the department is still violating those rights, but it’s now using traffic stops to search Black and Latino drivers disproportionately in an effort to find illegal firearms or drugs.
“These fishing expeditions almost never turn up weapons or contraband,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit, which names Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Michael LiPetri, the chief of department, among others, calls for a court to rule that the practice is unconstitutional and that it disproportionately targets people of color.
“The ultimate goal is to get the N.Y.P.D. to stop targeting Black and Latino drivers under the suspicion that they might be carrying weapons when they’re not,” said Daniel Lambright, the senior counsel for criminal justice litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
A police spokeswoman said on Wednesday evening that she could not comment on the lawsuit because the department had not read it yet.
Police officials were asked at a City Council hearing last April about the disparities after a report released at the time that said Black drivers were 10 times as likely to be searched as white drivers were.
Joshua Levin, the department’s director of legislative affairs, said the department sends more officers to areas of the city with a high number of crimes and resident complaints.
“Any time you have more police officers in a certain area, as a result you are going to see more enforcement, you are going to see more car stops, you are going to see more searches,” he said.
Mr. Levin added that the city had “many mechanisms in place” to help residents who feel they were targeted or searched unlawfully.
The New York Civil Liberties Union said it had studied data obtained from the Police Department and analyzed motor vehicle stops from 2022, when the department began collecting the data, through Sept. 30, 2025. The organization said it had to sue the department for the information.
The complaint filed on Wednesday was made on behalf of the N.A.A.C.P. New York State Conference and two men — Justin Cohen, a 35-year-old yoga practitioner from Peekskill, N.Y., and Christopher Oliver, a 30-year-old Brooklyn resident — who said they had been pulled over because they were Black.
Mr. Oliver said he was pulled over four times from August 2024 to April 2025 while driving through Manhattan. During three of the stops, the police said they had pulled him over because the tint on his windows was too dark and violated state law. But he never received a summons, and his windows were never examined, according to the lawsuit; the officers instead searched his car, saying they were looking for weapons. They did not find any, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Cohen said he was driving a rental car through the Bronx with a friend in the early-morning hours one day in May 2023. They were returning from a night at a casino in Yonkers when four police officers stopped them outside a gas station. They told Mr. Cohen he had been driving 35 miles per hour in a 25-m.p.h. zone.
The exchange between Mr. Cohen and the officers became heated after Mr. Cohen denied he had been speeding and accused one of the officers of “being aggressive,” according to footage from body cameras.
The officers told him they needed to search his car for weapons and ordered him and his friend to leave the vehicle so they could do so, Mr. Cohen said.
“We have to finish our investigation because of the way you’re acting,” one of the officers could be heard saying.
Mr. Cohen cursed several times, saying he was targeted for being “Black in America.”
The officers placed him in handcuffs and took him and his friend to a jail cell at the 48th Precinct station, telling them they would be released after the car had been searched. Shortly after 3 a.m., officers gave Mr. Cohen back his car keys and a ticket for speeding, according to the lawsuit.
“It was just humiliating to be searched against your will and then thrown in a cage,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview.
The speeding ticket was dismissed in court, according to the lawsuit.
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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