The officers who veered in entrance of a dirt-bike rider making an attempt to evade police — a maneuver that ended with the rider useless — violated NYPD pointers designed to make sure police automotive chases don’t end in disaster, officers have confirmed.
The alleged violations emerged in a report launched this week by Legal professional Normal Letitia James on the 2023 loss of life of Samuel Williams, who died after colliding with an unmarked car pushed by cops making an attempt to dam a bunch driving unlawful dust bikes and ATVs throughout the College Heights Bridge from Manhattan to The Bronx.
The lawyer common concluded that, whereas the officers broke departmental guidelines, their actions didn’t rise to the extent of felony culpability. In consequence, she filed no fees.
James’ report got here as a decide ordered the NYPD to launch physique digital camera footage and paperwork from the incident to The Metropolis Reporter amid a long-running Freedom of Info lawsuit. A lawyer for Williams’ household blasted the lawyer common’s resolution to not file fees.
Cops Versus Bikers
As described by the lawyer common’s Workplace of Particular Investigation, the Could 28, 2023, accident occurred when a caravan of 4 unmarked police automobiles carrying Neighborhood Response Workforce (CRT) cops noticed a bunch of dust bikes and ATVs — that are unlawful on New York Metropolis streets — approaching the College Heights Bridge connecting The Bronx and Manhattan.
Williams, the chief of the group, was popping wheelies as he headed towards the NYPD caravan. The second automotive within the cop caravan pulled into the oncoming lane to dam the riders, and a 3rd cop automotive behind him did the identical.
State investigators decided that Williams was capable of swerve across the first police automotive making an attempt to dam him and seemed to be accelerating to attempt to dodge the second when he crashed into it. He was launched by way of the air and landed on the road, his leg badly damaged. He died the following day; Williams’ loss of life was dominated “accidental,” attributable to “blunt injuries” to his legs and broken blood vessels.
The AG’s report famous that the NYPD’s written insurance policies on car pursuits particularly prohibited members of service from “placing a moving department vehicle in a position to be struck by the pursued vehicle.”
The NYPD had hundreds of mopeds, scooters and bikes impounded at its Pink Hook, Brooklyn facility, July 14, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The report additionally revealed that the NYPD had decided that the actions of Officer Raymond Perez, the cop who steered the car in entrance of Williams that precipitated the crash, “were outside department guidelines.” The report didn’t reveal the particular violation.
A federal lawsuit filed by Williams’ household asserts that the NYPD’s Drive Investigation Division (FID) “concluded, at least in part, Perez violated NYPD guidelines.” The go well with asserts that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch “approved those findings” and it claims Perez “was subsequently disciplined.”
The division has for greater than a yr blocked The Metropolis Reporter’s public information request in search of the investigation’s closing memo. Final week, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Cornell Regulation College First Modification Clinic, a decide ordered the NYPD to show over the memo to The Metropolis Reporter inside the subsequent 90 days.
The NYPD didn’t reply toquestions concerning the inside investigation’s discovering or whether or not Perez or Officer Hermes Rodriguez, the opposite cop who steered his automotive into oncoming site visitors to dam Williams, had been disciplined.
The lawyer common’s report famous that in February 2025, newly appointed Commissioner Tisch tightened the rules even additional, barring car pursuits of drivers officers both witnessed or suspected of committing site visitors infractions, violations or non-violent misdemeanors.
The AG decided that underneath these new pointers, the cops would have had no justification to even pursue Williams, who was driving an unlawful dust bike with out a license plate on a metropolis avenue, as a result of 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 lawyer common’s workplace discovered. “Those actions presented a clear risk to life and limb, and in fact they caused the death of Samuel Williams.”
The AG additionally “found no evidence that NYPD ever permitted such maneuvers in such circumstances, nor that it ever trained its officers to perform them.”
At the very least some members of the Neighborhood Response Workforce had embraced the tactic of veering into oncoming site visitors to dam unlawful dust bikes and ATVs, even supposing it violated NYPD pointers, the report discovered.
The staff’s supervisor, Lt. Vicente Perez, who was within the automotive behind Perez’s, advised the AG’s investigators that his staff had used this tactic “successfully” previously. He additionally conceded that “officers were not trained by NYPD to do this maneuver.”
Lawyer: Findings ‘Enough’ for Fees
On Tuesday, Williams’ household’s lawyer, Jaime Santana, castigated the lawyer common for failing to cost 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 got here into being in early 2022 after then-Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, introduced his plans to crack down on the wave of unlawful dust bikes and ATVs terrorizing motorists and pedestrians.
The staff rapidly expanded and commenced sending out caravans of cops in unmarked sedans to hunt for and shut down these cowboy convoys. A July 2023 examination of 911 information by The Metropolis Reporter discovered that by the summer time of 2023, the variety of NYPD car pursuits had spiked by 600%, and inside a yr the lawyer common had opened investigations into six deadly CRT-related crashes.
A November 2024 report by the town Workplace of Inspector Normal overseeing the NYPD criticized the division’s oversight, discovering 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 common 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.”
Three years after the incident, no administrative trial date has been set.
State Legal professional Normal Letitia James’ workplace stated there was inadequate proof to cost officers concerned within the 2023 loss of life of Samuel Williams on the College Heights Bridge. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Because the collision on the College Heights Bridge, Perez has been the topic of seven extra CCRB complaints. They embody a November 2024 incident by which Perez was discovered to have carried out an unauthorized search of a car, and a Could 2024 encounter the place CCRB substantiated allegations that Perez failed to offer his enterprise card to the topic of a cease and frisk who requested one.
Whereas Perez stays assigned to a CRT unit, Officer Rodriguez — the opposite officer who pulled in entrance of Williams — was compelled to resign after he was charged criminally by the Manhattan District Legal professional in August 2024.
DA Alvin Bragg alleged that, two weeks after the incident on the College Heights Bridge, Rodriguez was concerned in what seems to have been a CRT car cease in Higher Manhattan. Prosecutors say Rodriguez used a baton to beat the driving force and to interrupt the automotive’s entrance and rear windshields. The incident was captured by a body-worn digital camera, and Rodriquez pleaded responsible to 3 fees, together with third-degree assault.
He later participated in 12 anger administration periods, carried out eight days of group companies and paid $1,190 in restitution. He’s barred from reapplying to be a police officer wherever in New York state.
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