A federal lawsuit accuses NYPD officers in Queens of veering into the path of a moped, “deliberately” striking it with a 14-year-old aboard, alleging the crash violates longstanding NYPD policy.
Officers then cuffed the youngster as he was loaded into an ambulance and hospitalized for a fractured femur and a nasty bruise on his head, according to the lawsuit, which was filed by the teen’s dad, Mahmoud Saleh, in Brooklyn Federal Court. The teen was not charged in the incident.
The lawsuit claims the actions are part of an “unwritten policy” in the NYPD to use cop cars against two-wheel vehicles as “instruments of force to deliberately block, cut off, strike, or otherwise physically intercept…. notwithstanding formal policies and directives governing vehicle pursuits and the use of force.” The state Attorney General recently blasted the department’s “deeply troubling” tactics in a similar crash that ended in a man’s death.
The NYPD’s Patrol Guide has long prohibited ramming vehicles or “placing moving Department vehicle in a position to be struck by the pursued vehicle,” even before the department rewrote its policy last year to bar cops from engaging in vehicle chases unless a suspect is wanted for a felony or violent crime.
The teen was sitting behind the moped’s driver at about 7:30 p.m., in a group of several other mopeds, at the intersection of 101st St. and Northern Blvd., when they were targeted by a joint operation by the 115th Precinct and the NYPD Community Response Team, or CRT, the suit alleges.
According to the suit, the teen spotted an NYPD vehicle about two blocks behind him, but it wasn’t making any effort to stop him or his friend, who was operating the moped. Moments later, another NYPD vehicle approached their moped from the opposite direction on Northern Boulevard, its lights and sirens off, and, cut across the double yellow line to swerve into their path.
The cop behind the wheel. who is not identified in the lawsuit, “deliberately struck” the moped when he blocked its path, the lawsuit alleges.
“It’s crazy. You could get somebody severely injured, paralyzed or killed by doing that, “the teen’s lawyer, Jon Norinsberg, told the Daily News. “I’ve just seen it in too many different cases for it to be a coincidence. This is definitely an unwritten rule they’re following.”
The impact knocked the teen unconscious, and when he came to, he was cuffed, laying on his back on the ground and in pain, the suit alleges. The cuffs didn’t come off until after the teen got a CT scan, when he found out he wouldn’t face any charges.
The NYPD for years has been running crackdown operations on illegal, unlicensed moped riders, who often travel in large groups and take over city streets and highways. An NYPD spokesperson wouldn’t say what the officers were responding to that day, or if they made any arrests, when asked by the Daily News.
“The internal investigation is ongoing,” the NYPD said, asked about the Queens operation, and about the allegations in the lawsuit.
The teen’s father told The News he doesn’t know why the police targeted the moped. Saleh said his son told him he was getting something to eat with friends, and would be home in 20 minutes. He found out about the crash because he got an alert from an app installed on his son’s phone. When he inquired about why his son was handcuffed at Bellevue Hospital, officers told him he wouldn’t be charged with any crimes.
“He got exposed bone, knocked out on the floor, they even handcuff him while the bone in his leg was exposed,” he said.
The city Law Department declined comment Monday.
The crash comes weeks after a June 8 report by Attorney General Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation on the death of dirtbike rider Samuel Williams, after a collision with an unmarked CRT vehicle in the Bronx in on May 28, 2023.
James’s office determined that the cop behind the wheel, Officer Raymond Perez, wouldn’t be charged criminally. Perez he crossed a double-yellow line to move directly into Williams’ path on the University Heights Bridge in Manhattan.
According to the report, the physical evidence from the scene could show that Williams tried to speed up and squeeze past Perez’s car, creating reasonable doubt that the officer acted with criminal recklessness.
But James’ office called the actions of Perez and the driver of another NYPD vehicle who tried to block Williams by crossing traffic and veering into his path as “deeply troubling.”
“Those actions presented a clear risk to life and limb, and in fact they caused the death of Samuel Williams,” the report states,” We found no evidence that NYPD ever permitted such maneuvers in such circumstances nor that it ever trained its officers to perform them,” the report states.
Norinsberg mentions the report, and a string of similar cases mostly dating back to the Adams administration, after Mayor Adams announced a crackdown on illegal dirtbikes, mopeds and ATV, and when then-NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell spearheaded more aggressive police pursuit tactics.
In January 2025, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch changed the department pursuit policy, barring cops from chasing after vehicles fleeing car stops unless a felony crime or a violent misdemeanor was committed.