NYPD officers shot and killed 13 people in 2022, the highest number of people killed by New York City cops since 2012, according to newly published data.

Last year’s fatal shootings by police of nine Black men and four Latino men, along with injuries from shootings to 15 other people, came amid a nearly 30% increase in recorded incidents involving police force by cops compared to the year prior, according to the department’s 2022 Use of Force Report.

The increases came during a year when police made 22% more arrests than in the prior year and the public called them for assistance nearly 10% more often, according to the report. 

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment from THE CITY. But outside experts said the increase in killings and use of force could have resulted from a wide range of factors, including more aggressive police policies, effects of the pandemic, and the nature and number of interactions between cops and the public. 

Dennis Kenney, a longtime policing researcher and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on crime and conduct in 2021 might make the 2022 data an anomaly, and that data on 2023 will ultimately provide better context.

Other factors would have to be analyzed to determine whether the increased use of force went beyond what circumstances required, he added. 

“It would logically follow that if the police are confronting more incidents and more incidents involving weapons and violence, that they themselves would be caught up in increases in that,” he said. “Where it becomes problematic is when use of force is going up but crime and incidents are not. That suggests a change in police behavior.”

Police reported using force in 8,270 incidents in 2022, up from 6,440 in 2021, according to the data.

The numbers included a 19% increase in cops shooting their guns — up to 62 from 52 — and a nearly 10% increase in their firing of Tasers, from 1,193 to 1,308.

Police also succumbed to gunfire that year: two officers, Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, were killed after a suspect shot them when they responded to a domestic disturbance call in a Harlem apartment. Among the 13 people killed by police last year was that suspect, Lashawn McNeil.

That incident came just weeks into the new administration of Mayor Eric Adams and then-police commissioner Keechant Sewell, and marked the first time since 2015 that multiple NYPD members were shot and killed.

The force report, which the NYPD recently posted online without announcement, noted that arrests increased by 22% in 2022 compared to the year prior, while calls for service increased by over 10% — leading to more engagements between police and the public.

The increase in arrests included a 6.8% increase in gun-related arrests, to 4,660, compared to a year earlier.

When compared to 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, incidents of police force were down by about 300 in 2022, while police made nearly 25,000 fewer arrests.

Police most often employ force on calls of crimes or violations in progress, which often lead to arrests, followed by encounters with people in emotional distress, the report says.

Adams, who served in the NYPD for 22 years before retiring as a captain, has signaled since his successful campaign for mayor that he would embrace a more proactive style of policing.

Almost immediately as mayor, he reconstituted a street unit known as “anti-crime” that had been disbanded in 2020 under Mayor Bill de Blasio, in part because of its reputation for being overly aggressive. Adams promised a more thoughtful approach.

In July 2022, Adams told a police academy graduating class that he wouldn’t leave them on their own to “fight against the evil elements in this city.”

“I am your general. I’m going to lead from the front as we take our city back and make sure we don’t go backwards,” he said at the event. “You have a police commissioner that gives a damn. You have a mayor that gives a damn. You have an agency that gives a damn. We know what we are made of, and you have become part of that family of who is the difference between a city of lawlessness and disorder or a city of law and order.”

As THE CITY has reported, a number of data points suggest a tougher-fisted approach by the department, including a surge in criminal summonses for minor offenses compared to pre-pandemic numbers and a skyrocketing number of vehicle pursuits beginning late last year.

In 2022, the NYPD reported a 22% increase in overall crime, but a decrease in shootings and homicides, compared to 2021. 

Decreases have been recorded in five of the seven major crime categories to date in 2023, with double digit drops in homicides and shooting victims year-to-year. Felony assaults and auto thefts are up, the latest data show. 

But almost all types of crime are still up significantly from where they were in 2021, apart from homicides, reported rapes and shootings.

Adams didn’t mention those specifics on Thursday when he and his team hailed the administration’s achievements when it comes to crime and employment.

“There’s only one soundbite that can define this moment: Jobs are up, crime is down,” Adams said at a press conference at City Hall. “That is what I ran on, promised and committed. Jobs are up, crime is down.”

Complaints Rose Too

The increase in use of force incidents came with a corresponding boost in the number of complaints about police behavior filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), according to the NYPD’s report.

People filed 1,679 complaints about police use of force with the watchdog agency in 2022, an 18% increase compared to the year before.

The CCRB also substantiated a much higher number of force allegations last year, 354, than in 2021, when 127 cases were substantiated.

A backlog of investigations that arose during COVID were cited in the report as part of the reason for the increase in substantiations. Last year also saw a flurry of complaints closed that stemmed from the spring 2020 police brutality protests because of a two-year statute of limitations on completing them.

In the cases of shooting deaths by police, the NYPD said in its report that 11 of the 13 men fatally shot were armed with guns, while one man had two prop guns and another had an imitation firearm.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which is tasked with investigating incidents of killings by police, ruled in five cases that it didn’t believe its prosecutors could overcome a defense at trial that the shootings were justified. The men in all five cases pointed or fired a gun at cops.

Investigations of the remaining eight cases are pending. 

In one of the closed cases, the NYPD said its officers responded to a call of a burglary in a Bronx apartment on Jan. 20, 2022.

They found Yoskar Feliz inside the apartment with a 9mm gun pressed to his head. The Attorney General’s report says Feliz also pointed his gun twice at a responding officer. 

At one point while Feliz was out of the officers’ view in the rear of the apartment, they heard two shots fired, before he fled through a window and into a nearby park.

Newly arrived officers chased Feliz and, according to the NYPD, shot him after he refused to abide by their orders to drop his gun.

Feliz’s family has challenged the NYPD’s justification for the shooting, and an attorney for the family on Wednesday said they plan to prove through a lawsuit filed in The Bronx in January that police used excessive force.

“We have evidence that the police shot at and fatally wounded Mr. Feliz after it was clear he no longer posed a threat to the officers or anyone else,” said the attorney, Gerald Cohen of Cohen & Fitch LLP.

The attorney general’s report on this incident notes much of the body-worn camera footage of the chase and shooting was too shaky, obscured or far away to confirm certain facts — including at what point Feliz was still brandishing a gun.