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A watchdog unit tasked with investigating NYPD discrimination can’t do its job
By
Samantha Max
Published May 11, 2023
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By
Samantha Max
Published May 11, 2023
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A new police watchdog unit tasked with holding NYPD officers accountable for racial discrimination could be forced to stop investigating cases just months after it launched.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of officer misconduct, says its racial profiling team is unable to do its job because of a severe staffing shortage. According to the CCRB, 20 of the unit’s 33 staff positions are unfilled.
At a monthly board meeting Wednesday, Chair Arva Rice said there’s no money left to hire those employees, following budget cuts to many city agencies at the behest of Mayor Eric Adams. If the CCRB doesn’t get additional funding in the new budget, she said, the agency will hand its racial profiling investigations back to the NYPD to review in-house.
“This is not a decision made in haste,” Rice said. “But this agency owes the people of the city an honest assessment of our ability to do the work.”
What’s more, the watchdog’s director has said that as of March, police had rejected all of investigators’ more than 100 requests for records — records without which the unit cannot function. For years, the CCRB has also fought with the police department for access to the records it needs to thoroughly investigate complaints. CCRB Director Jon Darche told the City Council that racial profiling and bias investigations require even more police records than other investigations – and has been given no access to them.
“In order to avoid further case backlogs or cases passing the statute of limitations, we hope our requests will be honored as soon as possible,” he said.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As of March, the agency had already received more than 100 complaints related to racial profiling and bias. If those complaints go back to the police department to investigate itself, it’s unlikely those officers will face discipline. When the police department was investigating its own officers for complaints before the racial profiling unit launched last year, it almost never found evidence of wrongdoing. Of 3,480 complaints of racial profiling and bias-based policing the NYPD investigated on its own between 2014 and 2021, the department found officers violated policy in just four cases — about 0.1% of the time — according to CCRB testimony at a March City Council meeting.
The City Council voted in 2021 to expand the watchdog’s powers, to also include complaints of racial profiling and bias-based policing. The board voted to create a unit dedicated to those cases last September.
Unlike the NYPD’s in-house bureaus that review possible officer misconduct, the CCRB — an independent oversight agency — is only allowed to investigate a few types of complaints, including claims of excessive force, discourtesy and offensive language.
The decision to include complaints of racial profiling and bias came after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked citywide protests against police violence, especially against people of color, who are subjected to police use of force at disproportionate rates. It also followed a package of police reform measures that passed through the City Council at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
To lead the team, the CCRB tapped Darius Charney, the civil rights attorney who spearheaded a class-action lawsuit against the city that resulted in a settlement overhauling the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices.
That suit uncovered widespread racial disparities in the department’s use of pedestrian stops, which persist today, even though the number of stops has drastically decreased. Recently released NYPD data on traffic stops has revealed similar trends, with about 90% of drivers searched and arrested last year being Black or Latino, Gothamist has reported.
Mayor Eric Adams and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tagged
nypd
watchdog
bias
CCRB
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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