By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/13/2026
Category: NYPD / Police Accountability / Civil Rights / Public Spending
NEW YORK CITY, NY –
An NYPD lieutenant says a prized source of police pay was handed out along racial lines, and that he faced punishment after reporting it.
Lt. Keith Hockaday, who is Black, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court accusing the city and an NYPD captain of racial discrimination and retaliation. The complaint also says supervisors pushed officers in a Strategic Response Group unit to increase arrests so the command could beat its prior-year numbers.
The claims are allegations. No judge or jury has found that the department discriminated against Hockaday, retaliated against him or imposed an unlawful arrest target. The NYPD declined to comment when Gothamist asked about the lawsuit.
Hockaday supervised a Brooklyn Strategic Response Group unit from April 2022 through February 2025, according to the complaint as reported by Gothamist. The unit deploys to protests, emergencies, terrorist threats and other high-risk events. Those assignments can generate overtime, which can add substantially to an officer’s annual compensation.
Hockaday alleges that non-Black lieutenants in the unit were asked to work overtime while he was never invited to those assignments. His complaint describes overtime as a form of workplace currency that favored some supervisors and excluded others.
The lawsuit ties that pay dispute to a second accusation about policing by numbers. Hockaday says his captain told him the unit had to surpass the previous year’s arrest count and warned that weak numbers could lead to a poor evaluation and transfer. He says he was instructed to press officers to generate arrests.
That allegation reaches beyond an employment dispute. If officers are told that success depends on beating an earlier arrest total, the public needs to know how commanders keep enforcement decisions tied to conduct and evidence. Arrest statistics are not proof that the alleged instruction produced improper arrests, but the instruction itself deserves an answer.
Hockaday also says the department brought disciplinary charges over overtime he worked while supervising arrests. According to the lawsuit, he surrendered 35 vacation days, paid $1,888.02 in restitution and was passed over for promotion to captain.
He reported concerns about overtime assignments to the department’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity in February 2025, the lawsuit says. That office forwarded the matter to the Internal Affairs Bureau. Hockaday alleges that transfers and additional penalties followed his complaint. His attorney, John Scola, said the department’s response punished an officer who reported misconduct.
The city may dispute the sequence, the reasons for the discipline and Hockaday’s account of how assignments were made. Those defenses have not yet been tested in court. Hockaday is seeking a jury trial and damages to be determined.
The money at issue is part of a much larger public-spending problem. A June report from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine estimated NYPD uniformed overtime at about $890 million for fiscal year 2026. The comptroller said the department accounts for roughly 40 percent of the city’s annual overtime cost and called for command-level staffing plans, compliance reviews and corrective action when units repeatedly exceed targets.
That scale makes overtime controls a taxpayer issue as well as a workplace issue. A system that relies on supervisors’ discretion must show who receives assignments, what rules govern the choices and whether complaints trigger neutral review.
The arrest-pressure allegation raises a separate oversight question. Internal Affairs received Hockaday’s complaint, according to the lawsuit, but the department has not publicly explained what it found. The city has also not said whether the Strategic Response Group audited arrest instructions or overtime distribution in the command.
A court will decide whether Hockaday can prove discrimination or retaliation. The NYPD can address the public questions sooner by disclosing the assignment rules, the review performed after his complaint and the safeguards that prevent arrest totals from becoming a performance demand.
Sources
Gothamist: NYPD lieutenant claims overtime pay was awarded on racial lines in new suit
New York City Comptroller: A Framework for Structural NYPD Overtime Reform
Leave a Reply