New York City police officers shot more people in 2021 than they did in the previous year, but fewer people died, according to the NYPD’s latest use of force report.

The report shows that police officers shot 21 people in 2021, six fatally, marking a major drop from 16 deadly shootings in 2012. The report said 95% of people that police shot at — including those who were not hit — were Black or Latino.

Instances in which police shot someone who did not die have ebbed and flowed during the last decade. Between 2020 and 2021 they nearly quadrupled, from four to 15. Data is not yet available for 2022.

“There’s always room for improvement,” said Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former police officer. “If you don’t sort of work to improve, you’re probably going to go backward.”

The NYPD declined to comment on the report and would not say when it expects to publish its 2022 report.

The report also highlights a major drop in officers’ shooting accuracy in recent years. The NYPD tracks what it calls the “objective completion rate,” which is the percentage of firearm discharges that “ultimately stops the threat.” That number was 53% in 2021, up slightly from 48% in 2020. Those rates mark a stark decrease from 2016-2019, when the percentage ranged from 83% to 96%.

NYPD use of force report shooting map.

NYPD

“Due to the nature of an adversarial conflict, using a two-handed grip, standing, and carefully aligning a firearm’s sights on the target are not always practical in the midst of such an incident,” the report stated.

But Moskos said he was surprised by the low rates after better training increased officers’ shooting accuracy in years prior.

“I didn’t think there was going to be any change there,” he said.

Racial disparities in use of force

Nearly all the people that police shot at in 2021 were people of color — 47.5% were Black and 47.5% were Latino. Just 5% were white. Meanwhile, 40% of officers who fired their weapons were white, 40% were Latino, 18% were Black and 2% were Asian.

The report noted that a disproportionate number of people injured and killed in civilian shootings in New York City are also people of color, with more than 70% of victims being Black and about a quarter being Latino in 2021. A map in the report shows that the locations where officers fired at people also align with the areas that have high rates of civilian shootings.

To reduce the number of people shot by police, Moskos said, “we have to focus on violence and gun violence.”

“We have to, at some level, address or ignore the racial disparities in that,” he said. “In New York City, you’re not going to be able to go after gun violence without a, just a pretty massive disparity in enforcement.”

Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell have made gun violence a main focus of their crime-fighting strategy. They’ve launched Neighborhood Safety Teams to get illegal guns off the streets, expanded the department’s Gun Violence Suppression Division, and taken other steps to prevent shootings and arrest those who perpetrate them.

While most major crimes rose last year, shooting incidents and victims did decrease last year. But some advocates have worried that the NYPD’s return to more aggressive tactics under Adams could result in more uses of force, lead to racial profiling and stoke mistrust between police and communities.

A recent analysis of state data by the Police Reform Organizing Project found that 88% of misdemeanor arrests last year involved people of color, up slightly from 87% in 2020 and 2021. More than half of people arrested on felonies were Black, while Black people make up about 25% of the city’s population.

“NYC, its people and its political leaders should no longer tolerate, to say nothing of effectively promoting, racist police practices that every day inflict harm and hardship on a selected group of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” PROP Director Robert Gangi said in a press release.

Other notable findings include:

  • Officers also fired their guns more – 43 times in 2020 and 52 in 2021. But that number was still far lower than the historic high in 1972, when police discharged their weapons nearly 1,000 times.
  • All six people who police fatally shot in 2021 were armed with a “weapon or dangerous instrument.”
  • The 15 people who survived their injuries either had weapons or were driving cars in a way that put officers in danger of death or serious injury, according to police.
  • Civilians shot seven officers in 2021, none fatally.
  • Three officers used their service weapons to fatally shoot themselves.
  • Complaints against officers accused of using excessive force dropped to a record low in 2021. The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates those claims, received 1,424 such complaints — down from 2,844 in 2012. But the number of substantiated complaints rose substantially, from 31 in 2012 to 127 in 2021.