NYPD Crash Investigations
Streetsblog Basics
Steve Levin to Ray Kelly: Time to Fully Investigate Serious Traffic Injuries
Brooklyn City Council Member Steve Levin wants NYPD to explain the way it investigates traffic crashes, and is preparing legislation that would bring department procedures in line with state law and significantly increase the number of officers trained to deal with cases involving serious injury and death.
March 15, 2012
Vaccaro: Video Shows NYPD Wrongly Faulted Slain Cyclist Mathieu Lefevre
Video footage indicates that NYPD was wrong to conclude that cyclist Mathieu Lefevre caused the October 2011 crash that took his life, according to Steve Vaccaro, the attorney representing Lefevre's family.
March 14, 2012
Bypassing Courts, NYPD Says Video Cleared Lefevre Hit-and-Run Driver
Court documents reveal that NYPD decided not to charge the hit-and-run driver who struck and killed Brooklyn cyclist Mathieu Lefevre based on video of the crash. While it's not clear how video footage can prove that the driver didn't know he had hit Lefevre, it was apparently sufficient evidence for the department's Accident Investigation Squad.
March 12, 2012
Husband Says NYPD Wrecked Case Against Driver Charged for Wife’s Death
Last week we reported how the botched NYPD investigation into the death of Brooklyn cyclist Stefanos Tsigrimanis was initially compromised due to a department policy that keeps the Accident Investigation Squad from working cases unless the victim is believed likely to die. When an emergency room doctor told police that Tsigrimanis was not fatally injured, AIS called off its investigation, and did not return to the scene for 46 days.
March 8, 2012
How NYPD Botched a Bike Fatality Investigation and Blamed the Victim
One of the appalling revelations at the City Council hearing on NYPD traffic safety policies was the rarity of full-scale investigations into crashes that injure or kill people. Unless the victim dies at the scene or is deemed likely to die, the police who are trained to look into traffic crashes won't take the case.
March 1, 2012
Driver Cleared By NYPD Found Negligent in Death of Cyclist Rasha Shamoon
A civil jury has found that a driver cleared of wrongdoing by NYPD was primarily responsible for the collision that killed a Manhattan cyclist in 2008.
February 14, 2012
Security Video of Fatal Hit-and-Run Doesn’t Match NYPD Descriptions
It took a lawsuit from the family of Mathieu Lefevre to pry information from NYPD regarding the hit-and-run crash that took his life. Now they have reason to believe the police are still withholding vital evidence.
January 31, 2012
Brooklyn DA’s Office Reviewing Mathieu Lefevre Hit-and-Run
The office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes will conduct a review into the death of cyclist Mathieu Lefevre, according to the borough's top prosecutor for vehicular crimes.
January 25, 2012
Trucker Struck Mathieu Lefevre With Driver’s Side Tire Before Leaving Scene
The hit-and-run truck driver who killed cyclist Mathieu Lefevre last October struck the victim with his front driver's side tire, according to a description in NYPD's investigative file shared by Lefevre's family. The description, based largely on video evidence police obtained in December, raises serious questions about the driver's claim that he was not aware he had struck Lefevre when he left the scene of the fatal collision.
January 23, 2012
Family of Mathieu Lefevre Sues NYPD for Withholding Crash Information
The family of Mathieu Lefevre has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD for refusing to release information related to the hit-and-run collision that killed the 30-year-old Brooklyn cyclist last October.
January 4, 2012