by Stephen Rivers
- Traffic stops fall as automated cameras issue millions of tickets.
- Staff shortages and shifting priorities drive enforcement drop.
- Speed cameras now outpace officers by massive ticket margins.
Drivers in New York see fewer police on the roads than they did only a few years ago. New data suggests that a combination of factors, including traffic cameras, has led to fewer stops, but far more tickets overall. The situation might seem strange, but enforcement itself is changing all over the USA.
Over the past decade, NYPD-issued traffic tickets have dropped significantly across the five boroughs, with Staten Island seeing one of the steepest declines. In 2015, officers issued just over 1 million moving violations citywide. By 2025, that number had fallen to roughly 678,000, a drop of about 32 percent. On Staten Island alone, ticketing fell by nearly 52 percent over the same period.
More: NYPD Stopped Two Million Drivers, But Some Got Searched Way More
According to SiLive, the biggest change came in 2020, when enforcement fell sharply during pandemic lockdowns and never fully recovered. Year-over-year, tickets on Staten Island dropped nearly 69 percent between 2019 and 2020, while citywide enforcement fell almost in half. Common violations like failure to signal, seatbelt offenses, and disobeying traffic signs all declined dramatically.
Declining NYPD Staffing Levels
Staffing seems directly connected to the situation. The NYPD has roughly 33,000 uniformed officers today, down from more than 40,000 in 2000. Local officials say the smaller force simply doesn’t have time to focus on traffic enforcement while handling higher-priority calls.
A retired officer said that short staffing means cops are often running from job to job instead of conducting routine stops. Of course, that’s not stopping the state from gathering revenue via traffic citations.
Surge In Speed Camera Tickets
Automated enforcement has exploded. In 2025 alone, speed cameras issued more than 4.4 million violations across New York City. On Staten Island, cameras handed out over 441,000 speeding tickets, more than 100 times the number written by police.
That shift is partly intentional. The city has expanded its camera program to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and plans to lower speed limits to 15 mph around hundreds of schools. Officials say it will improve safety. Whether or not that happens is hard to say, but it’ll certainly bring in more cash for the city.
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Automated cameras now issue 6.5 times more traffic tickets than NYPD officers despite staffing shortages.
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This shift prioritizes revenue generation over community policing while reducing officer-driver interactions.
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NYPD staffing dropped from 40,000 officers in 2000 to just 33,000 today, limiting patrol capacity.
