As Mayor Eric Adams doubles down on increasing police visibility to combat what he calls a perception of lawlessness in the city, his administration continued to ratchet up police-involved sweeps of homeless encampments last year, new data analyzed by Gothamist shows.

The number of times NYPD and city employees were deployed to clear encampments under Adams peaked starting in August, with the city conducting an average of 500 sweeps every month through the fall, records obtained by Gothamist and the Safety Net Project through a Freedom of Information law request show. Police were present at nearly all of the nearly 8,000 encampment sweeps that took place from May 2022 through this February.

One street in the East Village was swept 199 times and city officials visited a Midtown site outside a mosque 192 times, records show. Both sites were also operating as street vending locations, neighbors said.

The previously unreported data shows how the mayor remains undeterred in his strategy to combat street homelessness. Left-leaning elected officials and nonprofit providers have called the encampment sweep policy ineffective and said it was too focused on ridding homeless people from the public eye rather than making meaningful policy changes. Homeless advocates are also concerned street homelessness will swell this summer following a court settlement in March that will allow the city to deny migrant adults shelter after 30 or 60 days.

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