![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/AP20258035252545_d2db1e.jpeg\")
\n An NYPD cruiser and a yellow cab collide on Broadway and 58th Street in Manhattan on Sept. 13, 2020, in New York City.\u00a0Photo: Gabriele Holtermann\/Sipa USA\/AP <\/p>\n
\n An NYPD cruiser and a yellow cab collide on Broadway and 58th Street in Manhattan on Sept. 13, 2020, in New York City.\u00a0Photo: Gabriele Holtermann\/Sipa USA\/AP <\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/TI_Avatar01-1.webp\"){kind=avatar}
<\/p>\n
Ian F. Blair is a writer and editor in New York City.<\/p>\n
On a street in Harlem, a New York Police Department officer sees a line of cars in front of him and can\u2019t help himself. First, he sits idle, acting as if nothing is happening \u2014 because nothing, in fact, is happening. The stoplight in front of him is red, cars are patiently waiting, an e-bicycle whizzes by. A pedestrian looks both ways and crosses unremarkably.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when something strange occurs. The officer inches his Ford Police Interceptor Utility \u2014 bearing the words \u201cCOURTESY\u201d, \u201cPROFESSIONALISM\u201d and \u201cRESPECT\u201d on the rear door \u2014 forward. He turns on his lights and dials up his choice of electronic siren. A quick whoop. A prolonged \u201cbluuuuurrrppppprp.\u201d A startling, pulsating, laser gun-sputtering sound. The cop car edges out over the crosswalk, then accelerates. As soon as he does, the sirens abruptly cease, like a fire alarm after a drill. The lights cut off. And the car is on to the next intersection. Inevitably, the police cruiser coasts through that red light too, nearly running over an auntie dressed in her Sunday best, who stops just in time not to become an afterthought.<\/p>\n
Where the NYPD is headed in that moment is not immediately clear; it seldom is. Just ask your average New York City resident. What is obvious, however, is that, whatever his destination, the officer didn\u2019t want to wait.<\/p>\n
The worst-kept secret in New York is also one of its most bizarre and frequent happenings: The NYPD runs red lights in obviously non-emergency situations all the time.<\/p>\n
The scene I just described was just an average Sunday uptown around brunch o\u2019clock. But it might as well have been in Bed\u2013Stuy during school pick-up or in Parkchester on a Saturday morning. I\u2019ve seen cops run lights so many times I\u2019ve lost count. And the more I talk to people, the more I\u2019ve discovered how prevalent the practice is.<\/p>\n
Stories abound. A parent at a party recounted a cop pulling out into an intersection against the light and nearly hitting a kid who had the right of way. Another person told me that officers at a red light near a church blurped the car in front of them, waiting patiently at a red. When the driver didn\u2019t respond, one of the officers hopped on his intercom: \u201cJust go through,\u201d he instructed, assuring them that it was OK. The driver obliged, perhaps thinking it was an emergency. The cop car drove through. As soon as he was on his way, the car lights and sirens turned off.<\/p>\n
I asked Gersh Kuntzman, editor of Streetsblog NYC and a vigilante corrector of illegal license plates and parking placards on the streets of New York, when he first saw a cop run a red.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s like saying, do you remember the first time you had a slice of pizza,\u201d Kuntzman said. \u201cIt happens every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kuntzman, a street safety advocate who has for years documented the NYPD\u2019s lawless driving behavior, told me nothing surprises him anymore. He has chronicled police parking habits<\/a> \u2014 inspiring academic studies<\/a> on the subject \u2014 and showed<\/a> how cops go to extremes to avoid tickets and evade tolls on their personal vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen [cops] drive recklessly and they park recklessly, it\u2019s not just a kind of disrespect for their neighbors \u2014 the ones they have sworn to serve or protect \u2014 but it is an example of how they see the use of the car. They see it as completely normal,\u201d he told me, adding, \u201cThey\u2019re almost never held accountable for misdeeds behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for interviews and comment.<\/p>\n One effect of watching a cop run a light is that something in you changes. Though what, exactly, is a bit difficult to pin down. It\u2019s hard to maintain the sense of shock because it transpires so quickly and so unexpectedly. The city\u2019s energy skips a beat, and when the flow of legal traffic resumes, you go about your day, with an expanded capacity to normalize what was previously unthinkable.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t stop you from trying to rationalize what you\u2019ve seen. When it initially happens, you think: Maybe there was a reason? Perhaps there is an emergency? After all, a police cruiser is, as defined in Section 1104, Chapter 71, Title 7, Article 23 of New York\u2019s Vehicle & Traffic Code<\/a>, an \u201cauthorized emergency vehicle.\u201d In an emergency, an authorized driver may \u201cproceed past a steady red signal, a flashing red signal or a stop sign\u201d and \u201cdisregard regulations governing directions of movement or turning in specified directions.\u201d Notably, they can do so only \u201cwhen involved in an emergency operation.\u201d<\/p>\n An \u201cemergency operation\u201d is its own well-known form of public peril. Police pursuits, according to a 2024 analysis of public traffic data by The City, can be quite deadly. Last year, NYPD vehicular chases resulted in nearly 400 vehicle crashes and at least 315 people injured. (The data didn\u2019t even cover a full 12-month span.) Those numbers, which The City crunched <\/a>using data from NYPD accident reports, have been rising rapidly under Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n But at least blowing through a light during a high-speed chase, though dangerous, is fairly straightforward. More difficult to explain is the need to disregard a signal during an \u201coperation\u201d that is so recognizably un-justified. It\u2019s easy to tell when the police are actually engaged in an \u201cemergency operation,\u201d because they act noticeably different. They drive with purpose, blowing through light after light on their way to the site of an alleged emergency. But when it\u2019s not an emergency, they run a light more nonchalantly. There\u2019s no urgency, no follow-through, no commitment. The lights don\u2019t stay on. The sirens go quiet. You know they aren\u2019t on their way somewhere because they often end up back in the flow of traffic a few blocks away. <\/p>\n Red-light running is a rare instance when the NYPD doesn\u2019t hide its motives: There are no tactics of deception or smoke and mirrors. No detours around the corner. No exhibitions of speed. The NYPD can\u2019t be bothered with filling plot holes to shore up the narrative. They have nowhere to be in a hurry, just not where they were.<\/p>\n In that respect, the act of running a red light is, paradoxically, an example of NYPD transparency \u2014 an act of transparency without any of the traditional metrics.<\/p>\n There are no comprehensive statistics about how often cops run lights in non-emergencies, or which officers engage in this practice the most frequently. Red-light violations are public and searchable by license plate, as Kuntzman has shown, but a problem arises when you try to determine the story behind a plate captured by a traffic signal camera: If a cop running a red is legal \u201cwhen involved in an emergency operation,\u201d how would you determine what instances to include? How would you know how many red-light runs are part of the same \u201cemergency operation\u201d? In addition to the limitations of the data \u2014 a traffic camera can only see what the camera is pointed at \u2014 you would need a reliable narrator.<\/p>\n The police have proven<\/a> themselves to be anything but, even if the media has a tendency<\/a> to take them at their word. Will one of New York\u2019s Finest dare to compile an accurate oral history of why their coworkers blow through reds on a daily basis? Without it, we may never know the whole story \u2014 the practice must have begun after 1920, when the first traffic towers were installed on New York\u2019s streets, but even then, the lights were manually controlled by a fellow officer, who likely switched the signal to let their brothers\u2019 Model A<\/a> power through.<\/p>\n We do have our own ad hoc surveillance, though. I\u2019ll never forget the first time I saw a cop run a red light for no apparent reason. It was in front of a large crowd of pedestrians, in midtown, not far from where Luigi Mangione<\/a> allegedly killed the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I was waiting for one of the homies, people-watching, when I noticed a cop car stopped at a light one block north of the corner on which I stood. Some tourists slowly crossed the street. Then I noticed the cop car turn on its lights and slowly slide through the light. To my right stood a pair of uniformed NYPD officers, and two more sentries posted up across the avenue. The car turned its siren on as it passed them, and then cut it off. It decelerated, then hit the siren again to extrajudicially make it through the next intersection only to get stuck in traffic when it neared Times Square. I couldn\u2019t believe what I had just seen.<\/p>\n We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. Join us. <\/p>\n Join Our Newsletter <\/p>\n Thank You For Joining! <\/p>\n \n Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. <\/p>\n Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?\n <\/p>\n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n I have lived in other major American cities, but I have never encountered police as pressed to get a few blocks ahead as they are in New York. After awhile, seeing a cop run a red becomes as visually unremarkable as seeing one scrolling on their phone<\/a>. It is the kind of thing you might not notice unless you were looking for it.<\/p>\n It also belies the \u201cDo as I say, not as I do\u201d approach to safety the NYPD is notorious for.<\/p>\n In April, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced<\/a> that police would begin issuing criminal summonses, in lieu of traffic tickets, to cyclists and e-bike riders caught running red lights. In June, the NYPD said<\/a> it would expand its \u201cquality of life\u201d division to every precinct in the name of safety \u2014 \u201cbroken windows\u201d by another name. Meanwhile, the NYPD and the mayor have been accused of corruption<\/a> by several former high-ranking NYPD officers and by a former commissioner, who called their ring a \u201ccriminal enterprise<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Allegations notwithstanding, the act of running a red \u2014 in non-emergencies and during bona fide emergency operations \u2014 is a demonstration of the freedom to move.<\/p>\n They desire to be able to drive as they please, to be who they want to be behind the wheel, without being accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I like to think that any officer who partakes is responding to a limitation that they feel is imposed upon them by the law. They desire to be able to drive as they please, to be who they want to be behind the wheel, without being accountable for their actions. They are rejecting the fact that a framework should govern their movements. The act of running the red light, in defiance of a law they view as a burden, is a way for them to push against a preordained way of being and toward a future, which they alone desire to author. The line on the ground is literal, but it\u2019s also metaphorical; it might as well be a Mad Libs for them to fill in as they see fit.<\/p>\n \u201cThe driver of an authorized emergency vehicle, when involved in an emergency operation, may exercise the privileges set forth in this section,\u201d \u00a7 1104 begins. In hitting his lights and siren, the officer behind the wheel responds to the prompt. If only he would have noted the \u201cconditions herein stated\u201d downpage: \u201cThe foregoing provisions shall not relieve the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons, nor shall such provisions protect the driver from the consequences of his reckless disregard for the safety of others.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An NYPD cruiser and a yellow cab collide on Broadway and 58th Street in Manhattan on Sept. 13,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":151375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,16429,88802,16437,20341,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,16428,16434,16435,16436,16433,88804,88803,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,47536],"class_list":{"0":"post-151374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-article-type-article-post","10":"tag-day-saturday","11":"tag-language-english","12":"tag-long","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-page-type-article","20":"tag-partner-factiva","21":"tag-partner-smart-news","22":"tag-partner-social-flow","23":"tag-subject-politics","24":"tag-subject-voices","25":"tag-time-11-00","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-of-america","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-usa","32":"tag-wc-1000-1999"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115040351056422918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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