An NYPD lieutenant who spent much of his career in the department’s Strategic Response Group claims in a new lawsuit that coveted overtime assignments in one of his units were distributed based on race. He also alleges that his supervisor pushed officers in the unit to make arrests in order to “beat” the number of arrests made in the year prior.
The lawsuit was filed by Lt. Keith Hockaday, who is Black, earlier this week in Manhattan State Supreme Court and alleges racial discrimination, retaliation and other violations by NYPD members.
Hockaday worked in a supervisory role at a Strategic Response Group unit in Brooklyn from April 2022 through February 2025, according to the suit. Court documents show he was then reassigned to another Strategic Response Group unit in the Bronx before he was administratively transferred to the 70th Precinct in May of this year. The lawsuit names the city and an NYPD captain who supervised Hockaday as defendants. Hockaday is seeking damages to be determined at trial, according to the lawsuit.
The NYPD declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Hockaday’s lawsuit comes as the Strategic Response Group remains a controversial unit in the NYPD. Officers assigned to the unit police events like protests, but are also trained to use heavy weapons and to respond to emergencies like terror attacks or mass shootings. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during his campaign that he would disband the unit, in part because he believes it should not be responsible for counterterrorism responsibilities and for policing protests covered by the First Amendment.
“Lieutenant Hockaday complained that overtime and discipline in his command were being handed out by race, and the Department's response was to escalate the penalty against him,” his attorney John Scola said in an email. “Retaliation like this silences officers who see misconduct, and we hope Lieutenant Hockaday's bravery in filing this lawsuit emboldens others who are suffering similarly to come forward.”
‘Overtime was currency’
In his supervisory role at a Strategic Response Group unit in Brooklyn, Hockaday answered to a captain who was known as a “commander who managed by numbers,” according to the lawsuit.
The captain told Hockaday that officers in the unit needed to “beat” the number of arrests from the prior year — and that he would receive a poor evaluation and a transfer if the numbers did not improve, the lawsuit states. Hockaday claims he was instructed to pressure officers to generate arrests, according to the suit.
The lawsuit adds that non-Black lieutenants assigned to the same unit were asked to work overtime assignments, while Hockaday was never once asked to do so.
“Overtime was not administered as a neutral term of employment. It functioned as currency — awarded to favored supervisors, withheld from disfavored ones — and it was distributed along racial lines,” the lawsuit states.
In addition to being passed over for those assignments, Hockaday claims he was unfairly targeted with disciplinary charges over legitimate overtime hours he worked while supervising arrests.
As a result of those charges, he was forced to forfeit 35 vacation days, pay $1,888.02 in restitution, and was passed over for a promotion to the rank of captain, the lawsuit states.
In February 2025, Hockaday reported his claims about the overtime assignments to the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, which passed the information along to the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, according to the lawsuit.
After Hockaday made the complaint, his captain transferred him to the Bronx and he was later transferred again to Queens, the lawsuit states.
He’s seeking a jury trial to settle the claims.
