by Eric Umansky
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The New York Police Department has tossed out hundreds of civilian complaints about police misconduct this year without looking at the evidence.
The cases were fully investigated and substantiated by the city’s police oversight agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and sent to the NYPD for disciplinary action. They included officers wrongfully searching vehicles and homes, as well as using excessive force against New Yorkers.
In one instance, an officer punched a man in the groin, the oversight agency found. In another, an officer unjustifiably tackled a young man, and then another officer wrongly stopped and searched him, according to the CCRB.
The incident involving the young man was one of dozens of stop-and-frisk complaints the NYPD dismissed without review this year — a significant development given that the department is still under federal monitoring that a court imposed more than a decade ago over the controversial tactic.
The practice of killing cases without review began three years ago as a way to cope with escalating caseloads that were approaching a deadline for discipline. But ProPublica found it has become more frequent under Police Commissioner Edward Caban.
The commissioner may not be in his position for long. He is under pressure to resign after his phone was seized in a federal corruption investigation. He has also faced criticism for failing to hold officers accountable for misconduct.
Since he took office last July, the NYPD has ended without review more than 500 incidents, about half the cases the oversight board referred to it, according to an analysis of board data. That rate has climbed to nearly 60% this year. Under Caban’s predecessor, Keechant Sewell, the department faced roughly the same number of cases, but about 40% were tossed without review. (Neither Caban nor Sewell responded to requests for comment.)
The tactic is part of a broader pattern under Caban, who has repeatedly used the powers of his office to intervene in misconduct cases brought by the oversight agency. This summer, ProPublica and The New York Times detailed how the commissioner has used an authority known as “retention” to short-circuit some of the most serious cases, which otherwise would face public disciplinary trials.
In those instances, Caban and his staff reviewed the cases and “retained” the ones they believed the CCRB erred on, often ordering little to no discipline. Some episodes, like officers using chokeholds and beating protesters with batons, were so serious the board concluded the police had likely committed crimes.
With lower-profile matters, the board investigates and makes recommendations directly to the NYPD, which then decides what to do. The department has a policy of not reviewing most cases that arrive within three months — or 60 business days — of the statute of limitations for discipline.
“This is highly problematic and deeply troubling,” said City Council member Alexa Avilés, who has sponsored police reform legislation. “What the department is saying is that there’s not enough time, so they’re not going to do anything at all. They’re using the statute of limitations to avoid accountability.”
The NYPD does not disclose to the public or to the civilians who complained of abuse that it has terminated such cases. ProPublica obtained data on the practice from the CCRB.
In response to questions, the department issued a statement defending its policy, saying that “every case and officer is entitled to due process,” and that the CCRB had not given it enough time in these cases under the statute, which requires charges to be filed or discipline given within 18 months of an incident.
“The suggestion that the CCRB may take 486 days to review a case, but the Department may not take 60, reflects a lack of appreciation for the thorough effort, analysis, and diligent investigation these matters require,” the statement said.
When the CCRB sends a case to the NYPD, it hands over a full investigation, complete with evidence such as body-camera footage and a report summarizing its findings. NYPD lawyers then review the files.
“It’s irresponsible for the Department, and a disservice to its officers and to the people of the city of New York for the NYPD to claim it needs more than 60 days to review every case it receives from CCRB,” said the Rev. Fred Davie, who chaired the oversight board until two years ago. “Simply ignoring substantiated incidents of misconduct is truly untenable and indefensible.”
The CCRB did have a history of handling cases slowly, but that was due in large part to the NYPD withholding evidence from civilian investigators, a 2020 investigation by ProPublica found.
After police shot and killed a Bronx man in his own apartment in 2019, the department refused to share the body-camera footage with the oversight board for more than a year and a half. The delay prevented the CCRB from filing charges against the officers within the statute of limitations. (The department has since pledged to hand over body-camera footage within 90 days of a request from the board.)
This year, Caban announced that he would not impose any discipline in the killing. He approved an NYPD judge’s ruling that the oversight board had acted too late.
“The CCRB is not perfect, but its goal is clearly accountability,” said Chris Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The NYPD clearly does not have that goal. When a problem arises, the department’s default solution is to kill the case.”
The NYPD can act on cases that have little time left until the deadline. CCRB data shows the department has done so more than 600 times over the past three years.
Advocates for reform said they were particularly troubled by the revelation that, under Caban, the NYPD has killed dozens of civilians’ complaints about stop-and-frisks without review. The NYPD was ordered in 2013 by a federal judge to end a pattern of discriminatory and illegal behavior around the practice, where officers stop, question and frisk residents without reasonable suspicion.
“This is an end run,” said Shira Scheindlin, the former federal judge who issued the ruling that led to the federal consent decree.
Scheindlin told ProPublica the NYPD’s refusal to even review many stop-and-frisk cases shows the department is policing with impunity. “Accountability was the whole point of my decision,” she said. “Now they’re saying we can still do what we want on the street. That there will be no consequences for bad decisions.”
Since Eric Adams, a former police officer, became mayor, stop-and-frisks have climbed to their highest level in nearly a decade. And a federal monitor has found a continuing pattern of unconstitutional and undocumented stops. An earlier report from the federal monitor noted that the NYPD “failed to impose meaningful discipline” after the CCRB found misconduct. The monitor said the NYPD “must provide more deference” to agency investigations.
Adams, who struck a law-and-order image as mayor, has had a tense relationship with the CCRB, and he recently forced out its chair after she criticized the department’s response to board investigations. His administration also froze hiring at the agency.
The agency has said that because of understaffing it has had to close more than 700 cases of alleged misconduct this year without investigating them.
“What I would ask of City Hall, City Council and the police commissioner is whether this is really what they want to tell people in their communities — that citizens’ complaints will be thwarted by these technical and bureaucratic measures,” Davie said.
In response to ProPublica’s reporting this year, City Council members have called for the police commissioner to be stripped of the power of retention. Advocacy groups, like Black Lives Matter Greater New York, have called for Caban’s resignation. And still others, like LatinoJustice, have filed a lawsuit challenging the department’s practices around misconduct cases. (The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment about the lawmakers’ calls or the lawsuit.)
The mayor’s office pushed back against criticism.
“Mayor Adams has spent his career fighting for both public safety and police reform, and that’s why he and Commissioner Caban have been clear that they expect a Police Department that is professional, impartial, and just,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The police commissioner and NYPD leadership continue to work diligently to ensure New Yorkers are both safe and policed fairly.”
So far this year, the department has killed more than 430 police misconduct cases without review, far more than it did in all of last year.
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