A Brooklyn woman is suing New York City and NYPD officers over a 2024 police chase in Bushwick that killed her 71-year-old mother and left her with a collapsed lung and broken ribs, arguing that an aggressive car-chase policy under Mayor Eric Adams is what set the deadly crash in motion. The lawsuit was detailed by Gothamist, which first reported its contents.
Jessica Vidal, 44, filed the federal suit against the city and the officers involved and is seeking damages to be determined at trial. According to the suit, on the day of the collision in 2024, Vidal was walking with her mother, Juanita Vidal, on Knickerbocker Avenue at about 5 p.m. Blocks away, NYPD officers pulled over 27-year-old Robert Matthews for not stopping at a stop sign. During the traffic stop, Matthews sped off, and three officers in an NYPD vehicle drove after him.
For eight blocks, according to the suit, Matthews swerved through traffic, running stop signs and red lights at high speed while the officers followed. The lawsuit alleges the officers never turned on their siren or otherwise tried to warn people in the path of the chase. When Matthews reached the intersection of Eldert Street and Knickerbocker Avenue, his Mazda CX-5 hit the Vidals in a crosswalk. Juanita Vidal was killed.
The claim that the siren stayed off is central to the case. The lawsuit cites neighborhood resident Yolanda White, who told NY1 she did not hear sirens after the crash. “Maybe if they had that on, people would have been aware,” she said, according to Patch.
Matthews pleaded guilty to manslaughter. News12 Brooklyn reported he was charged with 18 offenses, including manslaughter and unlawful fleeing of a police officer in a motor vehicle, and was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. According to the lawsuit, the judge who sentenced him rejected the prosecution’s request for a stiffer sentence because the officers chasing him “bore significant responsibility for the collision.”
The suit frames Juanita Vidal’s death as one predictable outcome of a policing approach it says grew more aggressive under Adams. It notes that then-Chief of Department John Chell said at a 2023 press conference that “people thinking they can take off on us, those days are over.” During the first three years of the Adams administration, the lawsuit states, pursuits caused 799 crashes, more than the total recorded over the previous seven years combined, citing reporting from The City Reporter. In the first nine months of 2024, NYPD vehicle pursuits jumped more than 47 percent compared with the same stretch a year earlier, and those pursuits ended in a crash about 25 percent of the time, according to an NYPD statement referenced in the suit. The lawsuit also points to earlier deaths tied to police chases, including a 3-month-old struck in Brooklyn in 2021 by a driver fleeing a traffic stop.
The department has since pulled back. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch reined in the pursuit policy, acknowledging that many chases are unnecessary because officers can use other technology to catch suspects. When she announced the changes, Tisch said 67 percent of the chases in 2024 were the result of a driver fleeing a traffic stop. Under the revised rules, officers’ discretion to start a pursuit is limited to the most serious and violent crimes, meaning felonies and violent misdemeanors, and chases are no longer permitted for traffic infractions, violations or nonviolent misdemeanors.
Richard Esposito, a longtime police analyst and former NYPD deputy commissioner, told Gothamist that chases in Brooklyn are especially dangerous. “Police pursuits in a densely populated urban environment are one of the most dangerous and high-risk forms of policing, for the officers, for innocent bystanders, for the suspect,” he said. “That’s why Commissioner Jessica Tisch changed the policies.”
Jessica Vidal claims the officers’ actions that day amounted to excessive force and violated her constitutional rights. A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department told Gothamist the death was a tragic loss and said the department would review the claims. The NYPD did not comment on the lawsuit, and Vidal and her attorney did not respond to Gothamist’s requests for comment.
Featured image: Courtesy patch.com
