New Yorkers can now see, precinct by precinct, where NYPD officers say they are stopping people for low-level investigative encounters.
A new interactive tracker pulls the NYPD's Investigative Encounters spreadsheets into neighborhood maps and charts, giving residents a mapped view of where officers report Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 encounters. Launched on March 13, 2026, the tool was published by the Red Hook Star‑Revue and is built from the NYPD's quarterly files released under the How Many Stops Act. For community groups and curious New Yorkers alike, the visuals make the newly required low-level stop data far easier to sift through than raw Excel downloads.
Who Built the Tracker and Where the Data Comes From
As reported by Red Hook Star‑Revue, the interface uses Datawrapper visuals that let users toggle between maps and bar charts and inspect precinct-level counts and race breakdowns. The underlying files are the NYPD’s quarterly Investigative Encounters spreadsheets, published on the department’s site in compliance with Local Law 43 of 2024, and the tracker pulls directly from those public Excel downloads.
What the Numbers Show
A John Jay College research brief documented 1,185,728 investigative encounters in the first six months after the law took effect, according to Data Collaborative for Justice. A separate analysis of the first year put the total closer to 2.7 million, with the vast majority coded as Level 1 encounters, according to Thurgood Marshall Institute. Early reviews of the figures also highlight sharp racial disparities in who is approached by officers, a pattern advocates say the new data makes much harder to wave away.
Why Advocates Say It Matters
Supporters of the How Many Stops Act say the mapping tools make the law’s promise of transparency feel concrete, giving neighborhood organizations, public defenders and lawmakers an easier way to compare precincts and spot patterns in NYPD activity. When the City Council voted to override the mayor’s veto, members argued the law would "bring forth a fuller picture" of investigative encounters, according to a City Council press release.
Limits and Accuracy Concerns
Experts caution that the maps are only as solid as the NYPD’s reporting. The court-appointed independent monitor has documented instances where officers mislabeled encounter levels during audits, raising ongoing concerns about how accurately those spreadsheets reflect what is happening on the street, according to the monitor's reports.
The NYPD spreadsheets list precincts rather than exact block coordinates, and the tracker itself notes some current quirks: the 105th and 116th precincts are combined on the maps, and precinct-specific race data are currently available only for the 76th precinct. Those limitations cap how granular the public visualizations can be, according to the Independent Monitor.
What to Look For Next
The tracker is scheduled to update as the NYPD posts additional quarterly files, and researchers say the visuals are a useful starting point for watchdog work even as they continue to call for audits and clearer supervisory review of the underlying data. For those who want to dig into the source documents themselves, the NYPD publishes quarterly Level I-III Excel reports on its Investigative Encounters hub, per the department's site.
