THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 0 N 27The department regularly ignored the
board’s recommendations, overruled
them or downgraded the punishments,
even when police officials confirmed that
the officers had violated department reg-
ulations, The Times found. All the while,
the city paid millions of dollars to resolve
lawsuits from people filing complaints in
some of those very same cases.
Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected on a
platform that included reining in police
misconduct, but these trends have gone
largely unchanged during his steward-
ship of the department.
The analysis shows that since Mr. de
Blasio took office in 2014, the department
has overruled the board’s recommenda-
tion in more than half of the cases in
which the board sought the most severe
discipline.
In the first half of 2019, the police com-
missioner at the time, James P. O’Neill,
imposed the penalty recommended by
the review board in just three out of the
14 cases the panel prosecuted.
In one of the remaining cases, the Po-
lice Department decided to allow an offi-
cer to go unpunished after the review
board concluded that he had used exces-
sive force in punching a 14-year-old boy.
In another case, the department chose
not to take action against an officer found
to have used a chokehold to lift a hand-
cuffed man off his feet and slam him into
a car.
The release of the Civilian Complaint
Review Board records comes as police
departments across the country are un-
der mounting pressure to remove prob-
lematic officers from their forces after
the death of George Floyd.
As protests swept the city and nation
this summer, both Mayor de Blasio and
Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea
urged the public to have confidence in
the city’s ability to hold officers account-
able. But the data offers further evidence
of the challenges that outside oversight
agencies face in going up against police
forces.
Mr. Shea, who was appointed a year
ago, has imposed the board’s recom-
mended penalty in only two of the 28
cases in which charges were brought,
records show.
After learning that The Times had in-
quired about how Mr. Shea has handled
misconduct, the Police Department is-
sued a news release last week promoting
his record on discipline. It said that un-
der Mr. Shea, the department had made
several changes, including adopting dis-
ciplinary guidelines that standardize
penalties.
“We ask for the public’s trust — and
the public must know we are worthy of
it,” Mr. Shea said.
Still, the handling of police misconduct
cases continues to roil the city govern-
ment: On Wednesday, four senior offi-
cials at the Civilian Complaint Review
Board were laid off abruptly.
The agency described the move as a
restructuring meant to expand its inves-
tigative muscle, but some employees
said the layoffs amounted to retaliation
against officials who criticized how the
agency responds when the Police De-
partment refuses to cooperate with its in-
quiries.
A Disciplinary System in ‘Disarray’
The Civilian Complaint Review Board
was established in 1993 by Mayor David
N. Dinkins and the City Council to ad-
dress widespread complaints that police
officers were operating with impunity,
rarely facing consequences for har-
assment and brutality, particularly in
Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Res-
idents who believed that they had been
subjected to misconduct often felt they
had no recourse, which led to a growing
resentment of the police.
The Dinkins administration envi-
sioned that the board would be independ-
ent of the Police Department, with its
own investigators and subpoena power,
and would give the public confidence
that abusive officers would be held ac-
countable.
But the data, released for the first time
in the agency’s history, instead suggests
that the board has become all but tooth-
less. The public can file complaints, but
the board, often referred to as the
C.C.R.B., has little ability to ensure that
officers deemed troublesome or worse
will face serious consequences.
“What is the C.C.R.B. there for, if
they’re recommending stuff and the
N.Y.P.D.’s not listening?” said Jacob Ale-
jandro, the gay man who said a lieuten-
ant had knocked him to the ground dur-
ing a Gay Pride parade, in 2014.
The Police Department declined to
comment on the instances of misconduct
described in this article, citing an ongo-
ing lawsuit challenging the city’s author-
ity to release additional records. The de-
partment would not make individual offi-
cers cited in the complaints available to
be interviewed.
Assistant Chief Matthew V. Pontillo,
who oversees disciplinary policies, dis-
puted the Times analysis and said it was
difficult to draw conclusions from the re-
leased data.
There were “unique factors that make
each case different, that you don’t see in
the data, that you would only see if you
read the trial decisions,” he said.
But the Rev. Fred Davie, chairman of
the review board, said the Police Depart-
ment’s internal disciplinary system had
been in “disarray” for years.
The review board investigates civilian
complaints that allege that officers used
excessive force, abused their authority
or used offensive language and gestures.
And in recent years, the panel gained the
power to investigate allegations of sexu-
al misconduct and false statements by
officers.
The board has no power to impose dis-
cipline itself and must present its evi-
dence to an administrative judge em-
ployed by the Police Department.
Neither does the board have the power
to bring criminal charges. That remains
the job of state and federal prosecutors,
who are empowered to investigate
crimes by officers, such as corruption,
assault or unjustified killings.Seven Officers Were Fired
Since 2015, the review board has pub-
lished statistics in its annual report
showing that the Police Department
chose not to follow its recommendations
in most cases in which the board brought
charges.
But with rare exceptions, the names of
officers and other details remained se-
cret until this year, when the State Legis-
lature, responding to the nationwide pro-
tests against police brutality, repealed a
law that had sealed police disciplinary
records.
As a result, the review board released
a database of civilian complaints that
identifies officers and lists allegations
against them, as well as the outcomes of
cases.
The data is not comprehensive, espe-
cially for complaints filed before 2001.
What’s more, information about people
who filed complaints, as well as about
pending cases, remains largely secret.
The Times was able to determine details
of cases through other means, including
by reviewing lawsuits.
The data provide the most detailed
portrait to date of allegations of serious
police misconduct resulting in charges
since 2001. Some of The Times’s findings
include:■The Police Department followed the
review board’s recommendations less
than 20 percent of the time.
■The review board brought charges
against a total of 3,188 police officers.
Some faced multiple charges in connec-
tion with one or more complaints.
■798 of the officers were eventually put
back onto the street by the department
after receiving additional instructions,
training or warnings; 890 were not disci-
plined at all.■Fewer than one in five officers re-
ceived punishments, ranging in severity
from one lost vacation day to 12 months
of “dismissal probation,” which allows of-ficers found to have committed offenses
they could be fired for, like using a choke-
hold, to keep their jobs as long as they
stay out of trouble.
■Just seven officers facing charges
were fired, and only after being con-
victed of a crime in state or federal court
or after lying to police internal affairs in-
vestigators. They include Daniel Panta-
leo, the officer who did not tell investiga-
tors the truth about his use of a banned
chokehold that sent Eric Garner into a
death spiral on a Staten Island sidewalk
in 2014.■Some officers had multiple findings
against them and continued to rise in the
department. The city has paid out more
than half a billion dollars just since 2016
to resolve lawsuits over these allegations
and many like them.
The board is considered to be so weak
that some lawyers said they discouraged
their clients from filing a complaint. The
lack of a finding or punishment against
the police officers involved could be used
to undercut a lawsuit.Body-Slammed by a Police Officer
Mr. Amin, who said he was body-
slammed by a police officer in 2012, re-
ceived just that advice from his lawyer.
“He said that, ‘All you’re going to be
doing is wasting your time,’ ” Mr. Amin
recalled. He proceeded anyway.
Mr. Amin, then 51, said he had been
trying to buy a meal for a homeless man
at a Coney Island restaurant when he got
into an argument with workers, who re-
fused to serve the other man.
According to the complaint, police offi-
cers arrived and accused Mr. Amin of
disorderly conduct, twisted his arm be-
hind his back, threw him to the ground
and briefly knocked him unconscious.
The review board identified the officer
as Andrew Schmitt and, based on its in-
vestigation, recommended that the de-
partment charge him with using exces-
sive force.
But an administrative judge in the Po-
lice Department found Officer Schmitt
not guilty of the charge after a depart-
mental trial. The city later settled a law-suit with Mr. Amin for $150,001.Pepper-Sprayed in a Holding Cell
Priscilla Colon was 50 when she watched
police officers arrest a friend of hers on a
street corner in the Bronx in 2009. Ac-
cording to her lawsuit, she was hand-
cuffed after asking why her friend was
being detained.
Later, in a holding cell at a Bronx
precinct, Officer Kevin Carney pepper-
sprayed Ms. Colon and told her to “fel-
late” him, according to court documents.
The C.C.R.B. recommended Officer
Carney be brought up on charges of ex-
cessive force for his use of pepper spray
and abuse of authority for refusing to
seek medical attention for Ms. Colon.
He was not disciplined on the force
charge. For abuse of authority, the
records indicate he was given command
discipline, meaning his punishment was
decided by his commanding officer.
It is not clear what sanction he re-
ceived, but at the time, the penalty for
command discipline ranged from a ver-
bal warning to 10 lost vacation days. The
city later settled a lawsuit and paid Ms.
Colon $50,000.
In some cases, the records appear to
show the police upholding the review
board’s findings. But in reality, the pen-
alty imposed by the commissioner was
still less than the one that the review
board requested.
For instance, the review board wanted
Officer James Frascatore to forfeit 10 va-
cation days for tackling James Blake, a
prominent retired professional tennis
player, in a case of mistaken identity that
received significant attention in 2015.
The officer was found guilty at an ad-
ministrative trial of using unnecessary
physical force, but Police Commissioner
O’Neill cut the penalty to five days.
In 2017, a Bronx sergeant used a Taser
stun gun on a pregnant 17-year-old girl
who refused to allow officers responding
to a call about an argument to enter her
family’s apartment, according to video
and court papers.
The department’s policy says the de-
vices should not be used on “obviously
pregnant women,” but a witness re-corded the officer using it on the girl, Dai-
lene Rosario, who screamed she was
pregnant as several officers attempted
to restrain her.
The sergeant, Robert Durst, pleaded
guilty to charges brought by the review
board and agreed to forfeit 25 vacation
days. But Mr. O’Neill docked him just 15.
The city later paid $250,000 to settle Ms.
Rosario’s lawsuit.
Scott Rynecki, who represented the
teenager, said the evidence could not
have been clearer — and yet, the officer
received a penalty that was hardly
enough to deter brutal misconduct, a pat-
tern he has seen with other clients.
“You’re not exactly sending them a
message not to do this again by hitting
them with such minimal penalties,” he
said.System ‘Still Needs a Lot of Work’
Assistant Chief Pontillo, who helps to de-
velop disciplinary policies, said one rea-
son the two agencies seldom agreed was
that the review board’s investigations
were uneven.
When the Police Department declined
to follow the panel’s recommendations,
he said, it was often because the review
board had overcharged an officer, failed
to produce enough evidence or did not
take into account all the circumstances.
He said the department was more
likely to follow the board’s recommenda-
tions when it recommended lesser disci-
pline, partly because harsher discipline
could hinder police officers’ careers.
“The mere fact of having a substantiat-
ed civilian complaint, that can be more
significant than any penalty actually im-
posed,” Chief Pontillo said.
Andrew C. Quinn, a lawyer who de-
fends police sergeants in misconduct
and criminal cases, said he had not been
impressed with the review board’s evi-
dence gathering.
“It’s a feel-good agency to say, ‘Hey,
look, we’ve got some oversight of the de-
partment, a bunch of politically ap-
pointed board members and a bunch of
inexperienced and incompetent investi-
gators,’ ” he said.
Mr. Davie, the board chairman, ac-
knowledged that the board could im-
prove the quality of some of its investiga-
tions but said the Police Department
could also do a better job at punishing of-
ficers.
The department’s system has long
been haphazard and too dependent on
the whim of senior police officials, he
said. For those reasons, the department
recently proposed a disciplinary matrix
to standardize penalties.
“The system was nowhere close to
what it needed to be, and it still needs a
lot of work,” he said.
The release of the records has re-
newed a long-running debate about
whether the police commissioner should
have sole authority over officer disci-
pline and whether the review board
should be able to overrule him.
Chief Pontillo said the commissioner’s
authority is crucial for maintaining con-
trol of the force, but Mr. Davie said the
entire trial process should be scruti-
nized.
Civil rights lawyers, elected officials
and community activists agreed, saying
the department’s willingness to depart
from the review board’s findings has
weakened civilian oversight.
“The N.Y.P.D. has been looking the
other way and condoning police abuse
routinely and stunningly for decades,”
said Donna Lieberman, executive direc-
tor of the New York Civil Liberties Union,
which filed a public records request to
get the data and make it public. “But I
think nobody had any idea how massive
and pervasive the failures of account-
ability were.”From Page 1“What is the C.C.R.B. there for, if they’re recommending stuff and the
N.Y.P.D.’s not listening?” said Jacob Alejandro, whom an officer tackled.ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Zakariyya Amin said an officer body-slammed him in 2012. The review
board recommended the officer be charged; he was found not guilty.ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESThe Civilian Complaint Review Board, established in 1993, was intended to be independent of the N.Y.P.D.KENA BETANCUR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESN.Y.P.D. Watchdog Has Little Bite, 20 Years of Cases Show