Hit-and-Run Crashes On the Rise In NYC

Dulcie Canton, 39, was cycling in Bushwick around midnight on Aug. 7, 2014, when she was hit by a car from behind. While Canton suffered two fractures and a concussion, the driver sped away as if nothing had happened. The entire crash was caught on a surveillance camera of a nearby apartment. Canton’s lawyer also found a broken side-view mirror, belonging to the car, near the crash site. Canton thought that with so much evidence the driver would definitely be caught and punished. However, when Canton contacted the police a month later, she was told that the detective handling her case was on vacation. Nothing happened for months. Canton and her lawyer identified the car and the guilty driver, but the police took no action.

“They didn’t charge him,” said Canton. “They didn’t even speak to him.”

Two years later, Canton is back on her bike, but at the cost of several surgeries, physical therapies and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The hit-and-run driver, meanwhile, drives freely. “My friend who lives in that neighborhood sees his car every day,” said Canton.

This is not unusual among hit and run cases. The New York Police Department (NYPD) announced on Oct. 5 that the city’s overall crime has fallen 3% compared to 2015. However, a closer look at the numbers showed that critical hit-and-run cases in the first half of 2016 increased 52% compared to 2015. Moreover, number of arrests made in hit-and-run cases had gone down.

According to NYPD data, the first and second quarter of 2016 saw 35 hit-and-run collisions that were fatal/critical. However, only 13 cases, or 37%, closed with an arrest. The arrest rate in 2016 was down from 48% in the third and fourth quarter of 2015 when 11 arrests were made for 23 fatal/critical hit-and-runs.

“If the injury is not deemed as serious by the NYPD, it is very common that it won’t be investigated,” said Attorney Peter Beadle.

The NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad (CIS) only investigates fatal/critical hit-and-runs, which account for less than 5% of all injury-causing hit-and-runs. In fiscal year 2016, only 60, or 1.1%, of all injury-causing crashes were investigated by the CIS. Those 60 investigations led to 27 arrests.

Lieutenant Tarik Sheppard said that the NYPD does not have enough resources to investigate every crash, and therefore prioritizes critical crashes.

“The NYPD can do much more by utilizing the resources they already have,” said Beadle. Beadle described one of his own cases where the victim had suffered a serious blow to the head after being hit by a car that left the scene. The case wasn’t investigated by the CIS. Beadle took it upon himself to investigate. He found a bodega near the crash site that had a camera that would have captured the incident perfectly. The bodega owners agreed to cooperate with the investigation too. However, by the time Beadle got involved, more than two weeks had passed and the footage had been lost.

“If the beat cops had done this basic investigation immediately after the crash, they could have identified the driver,” said Beadle.