NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Two NYPD officers that chased a driver in a stolen SUV in Upper Manhattan on Wednesday were suspended for fleeing the scene and not making an official report after he crashed and died, sources told 1010 WINS.
A police spokesperson confirmed the suspensions and said that the incident is under review by the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division and the Attorney General’s office.
Both officers are assigned to the 50th Precinct, serving the northwestern portion of the Bronx, and early Wednesday morning began following the Honda CR-V down the Henry Hudson Parkway into Manhattan, sources said.
The driver exited the parkway at Dyckman Avenue in Inwood just before 5 a.m. and crashed into a building on the edge of Inwood Hill Park, causing his car to go up in flames, sources said.
The cops in pursuit allegedly left the driver to die in the fiery collision and returned to their precinct. His identity was not immediately released.
They are accused of finishing their shift and signing out without reporting the incident, but sources said their marked patrol vehicle was caught leaving the scene on surveillance cameras.
The medical examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine the driver’s official cause of death.
The incident comes not even three months after the NYPD introduced new police vehicle pursuit rules, limiting them “to only the most serious and violent crimes (felonies and violent misdemeanors).”
“The NYPD’s enforcement efforts must never put the public or the police at undue risk, and pursuits for violations and low-level crimes can be both potentially dangerous and unnecessary,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said when the new rules were announced in January.
According to police, 25% of the 2,278 vehicle pursuits in 2024 resulted in some combination of collision, property damage or physical harm. Of those chases, 67% were prompted by someone fleeing a traffic stop.
Department brass created the new guidelines after receiving criticism that officer pursuits lead to crashes that injure other drivers and pedestrians. Tisch said that many of the offenders being pursued can now be tracked down with “advanced tools of modern-day policing,” like drones and GPS trackers.
The new rules went into effect on Feb. 1 to allow time for officer training.