Overview

• City Hall says the Q-Teams pilot launched in April has now been scaled across all five boroughs, with Staten Island added on August 18 and housing commands slated to follow this month.
• The administration reports an average 47–50 minute drop in non-emergency response times alongside 710 vehicle tows, 322 seizures of illegal e-bikes, scooters and mopeds, 1,144 smoke-shop inspections with 211 padlocks, and 1,650 homeless-condition responses.
• Q-Team officers are trained to target neighborhood problems such as noise complaints, illegal vending, outdoor drug use, unregistered vehicles, encampments, and reckless e-bike or scooter riding.
• The Legal Aid Society condemns the expansion as punitive, warning it criminalizes low-income New Yorkers, risks deportation consequences for immigrants, and burdens people with arrest records that hinder housing, education and services.
• In a separate development, a federal judge ordered ICE to improve conditions at its Manhattan processing facility, mandating hygiene supplies, sleeping mats, water, medical access and confidential attorney calls, with a follow-up hearing set for September 3.