Policing Project - NYU School of Law

05/12/2026

"Over the course of a nearly 20-year NYPD career, I responded to countless calls that had little to do with criminal activity. The most common involved people in crisis, neighbors worried about a loved one, or individuals whose primary need was medical or mental health care." - retired NYPD officer Michael Balionion on giving NYC's new Department of Community Safety a fair shake:

Policing in New York City has always been about more than fighting crime. Over the course of a nearly 20-year NYPD career, I responded to countless calls that

05/08/2026

Infrastructure isn’t neutral. Our executive director Max Markham sits down with ACLU President Deborah Archer to discuss how historical infrastructure choices created “Dividing Lines” in our communities—and how those choices led to the over-policing of Black neighborhoods today.

Drawing from the Policing Project and ACLU’s new joint report, “Safe Roads for All,” Max and Deborah explore why traditional traffic enforcement often fails to make us safer and how we can transition toward safer streets that prioritize civil rights and road safety simultaneously.

Read our blog about the Safe Roads for All report: https://www.policingproject.org/news-main/we-cant-enforce-our-way-out-of-a-deadly-traffic-crisis

04/13/2026

Every day in the United States, more than 100 people die in traffic crashes. Today, we released a new report with the ACLU showing that our country's current approach to traffic safety has failed to reduce roadway deaths while imposing harsh financial and human costs.

That toll isn’t inevitable, and it isn’t random. It is the consequence of deliberate policy choices made over generations about who and what to prioritize on American roads.

More specifically, it reflects a misguided approach to managing a public health crisis through individual enforcement – against the better judgement of safety experts, researchers, and impacted communities. The traffic safety crisis, after all, is not one of misbehavior and crime; it is the result of poor design, engineering, and politics.

Learn more about how we got here and our roadmap for improving traffic safety, including limiting incentives for non-safety stops, restricting ticketing practices and/or potential revenue from ticketing practices, and reducing speeds and crashes using roadway redesign and speed reduction policies and tech.

A new report released today by the Policing Project and the American Civil Liberties Union finds that the United States’ current approach to traffic safety has failed to reduce roadway deaths, while imposing significant financial and human costs on communities.

03/18/2026

A significant share of traffic stops in the U.S. are for minor violations that have almost nothing to do with the actual causes of crashes. Meanwhile, the investments that consistently save lives — better street design, smarter signals, focused enforcement — go overlooked. That's what the 2026 Convening on Right-Sizing Traffic Enforcement at NYU Law is fixing. Join us in NYC this April.

Please join us for the 2026 Convening on Right-Sizing Traffic Enforcement which will include plenary sessions serving municipal leaders, researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders who want to collaborate on sharing promising new practices and charting a course forward

03/04/2026

Registration is open for our 2026 Alternative Response Convening in Chicago (June 4-5).

Alternative response programs are growing fast. They’re sending counselors to mental health calls, peer responders to wellness checks, and mediators to disputes.

Join us for two days of panels and conversation on making alternative response a permanent, durable field.

Register now:

Historically, 911 systems dispatch police to all types of emergencies—mental health crises, wellness checks, disputes—regardless of whether police are the best-equipped responders. Alternative response programs take a different approach, sending unarmed professionals like clinicians, peer respon...

02/11/2026

Traffic crashes are a leading—and preventable—cause of death in the U.S.

There’s more we can and should be doing to address this road safety crisis. But our over-reliance on high-volume traffic enforcement has overshadowed promising solutions that could actually save lives.

Join us April 27-28, 2026 at NYU School of Law for the Convening on Right-Sizing Traffic Enforcement. We're bringing together municipal leaders, researchers, and practitioners from road safety and criminal justice to explore what works: decriminalizing non-safety stops, civilian traffic enforcement, and balancing enforcement with preventative street safety measures.

Register now:

Please join us for the 2026 Convening on Right-Sizing Traffic Enforcement which will include plenary sessions serving municipal leaders, researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders who want to collaborate on sharing promising new practices and charting a course forward

02/05/2026

If you live and drive in Washington state, your car is likely being tracked. Automated license plate readers might be capturing your location and movements. The cameras reveal where you live and work, where your kids go to school, what religious services you attend, and what political rallies you join.

Right now, there are virtually no rules about how this data gets used, who can access it, or how long it's kept.

Yesterday, our counsel, Anita N.H. Yandle, published a op-ed in The Seattle Times about why Washington's Driver Privacy Act (SB 6002) is a critical step forward. Not to ban the technology, but to ensure it's used responsibly by law enforcement and protects the people it's meant to serve.

The information collected by ALPRs can reveal deeply personal information about people. Given that sensitivity, and potential for misuse, guardrails are needed.