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NYPD commissioner holding more cops accountable, but still blocking some misconduct cases
By
Charles Lane
Published Oct 3, 2025
Modified Oct 5, 2025
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By
Charles Lane
Published Oct 3, 2025
Modified Oct 5, 2025
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Jessica Tisch promised to restore transparency to the scandal-plagued NYPD when she became police commissioner almost a year ago.
And by one measure, she’s disciplining officers much more than her predecessor, according to a Gothamist analysis.
For more than a decade, the NYPD commissioner has had the power to quash internal disciplinary trials for officers accused of misconduct before they ever take place — provided the officer has no previous violations.
Tisch has used that authority to "retain" cases at least 25 times between November 2024 when she took over and July 2025, the last date for which records were available. By comparison, Edward Caban blocked a record-breaking 82 cases during his 14 months as police commissioner.
NYPD officials say Tisch takes discipline very seriously and is using her retention power sparingly and with thorough deliberation. In the cases she’s blocked from trial, police officials said the Civilian Complaint Review Board — which brings misconduct allegations against officers — made factual errors or misinterpreted department rules.
"Just because I can do something doesn't mean I should,” Tisch told city councilmembers in May, in regards to retention. “I am committed to being thoughtful about when I exercise this provision and I have been."
Police discipline has taken center stage in the mayoral race, with Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani saying he wants to curb the commissioner’s power over the NYPD disciplinary process. Public defenders and transparency advocates say continuing to block police misconduct trials amounts to covering up injustices and diminishes her reputation as a reformer.
“If you told me she's got 2% retentions, I'd say that's a sign that she's a reformer,” said Chris Dunn, the New York Civil Liberties Union's former legal director. “But she's clearly retaining cases. It's not like she's decided that's a bad thing to be doing.”
The NYPD declined to make any officials available for an interview on the record, but officials said Tisch is stopping departmental trials where the Civilian Complaint Review Board has made factual mistakes or misinterpreted use of force guidelines.
Officials at the Civilian Complaint Review Board offered only muted criticism of Tisch and have at times praised her willingness to work with the agency, although they declined to answer specific questions on the record.
The road to retention
The NYPD signed an agreement in 2012 with the review board that allows the commissioner to "retain" police misconduct cases under certain narrow circumstances and when the officer has no discipline history. This stops the trial process where the board presents its prosecution, accused officers mount a defense, and a police department judge decides the merits of the case in a public forum.
Commissioners had used the power sparingly until Mayor Eric Adams took office and Caban blocked 82 cases from going to trial during his 14-month tenure. Caban resigned amid a federal probe, and Tisch took over with a promise to clean house. She fired several high-profile chiefs, started sharing more departmental data and promised to overhaul the internal affairs bureau.
But her ongoing use of retention has led to blowback from transparency advocates and victims of police abuse.
The 25 cases she’s blocked include a detective striking a young woman in the mouth, two officers breaking the arm of a handcuffed man and a group of officers moving a cyclist so an off-duty sergeant could park his private car illegally on the sidewalk, according to civilian complaints.
When the Civilian Complaint Review Board decided an officer broke the rules, Tisch concurred with their findings 91% of the time, three times more often than Caban, according to the agency.
That’s the highest rate of agreement with police watchdogs of any commissioner in the last 10 years. But Tisch’s reputation as a reformer has been complicated by some high-profile decisions.
“It is not just that the department is agreeing with the CCRB much more often,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber told City Councilmembers last month. “It is also evaluating CCRB cases and imposing discipline at a much faster pace.”
She overturned a guilty verdict after an NYPD trial judge recommended firing Lt. Jonathan Rivera, saying that he improperly killed Allan Feliz, an unarmed man, during a traffic stop. Tisch reversed that decision in July, saying that Rivera made a split-second decision to save his fellow officer.
Feliz’s family said Tisch should be ashamed of herself.
“It's only a matter of time until Rivera hurts another New Yorker, and that blood will be on Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch's hands,” Samy Feliz, Allan’s brother, said last month.
Mac Muir, who ran the civilian police oversight agency in Oakland, California and was an investigator for New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board from 2016 to 2022, said Tisch’s approach is an improvement over Caban’s.
“ What you can at least appreciate about the Rivera decision is that it happened in the public eye,” he said. “Nobody has any questions about what occurred, and Tisch has taken ownership of it.”
A retention surge
The agreement giving police commissioners authority to block misconduct from going to trial was a compromise between the NYPD and those who wanted police watchdogs to prosecute misconduct instead of NYPD attorneys, according to Dunn, who lobbied for the change. Watchdogs gained the ability to prosecute cases, but the police commissioner could block them.
“That was a significant step forward in terms of accountability that was widely welcomed,” he said. “[But] it gave the department a lot of authority, including the ultimate ability to simply decide what, if any, discipline is imposed.”
While most agree Tisch is far more transparent than Caban, reformers also see Caban as the nadir of police accountability in New York City.
The surge of retention under his leadership coincided with broader allegations of interference in the police disciplinary process. In a recent lawsuit, the former head of the NYPD’s prosecution unit, Amy Litwin, alleged that Caban, with tacit approval from Adams, interfered with misconduct cases, “attempting to circumvent official procedure so that his friends and allies would avoid proper and fair discipline." City Hall denied involvement in firing Litwin.
In his own lawsuit, former Commissioner Thomas Donlon alleged that coverups of police misconduct within Caban’s NYPD were so rampant that the department was operating a “criminal enterprise.” Caban’s twin brother has come under federal investigation for operating a protection racket inside the NYPD, essentially shaking down bars and nightclubs for money. And former Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey has been accused of trading overtime for sex from a subordinate, prompting an investigation by federal prosecutors.
Under that shroud of scandal, Tisch’s mandate was to restore some measure of trust between the department and the public.
She told the City Council in May that she has been “thoughtful” about blocking misconduct prosecutions.
Andrew Case, a civil rights lawyer with LatinoJustice, said the ability to block trials is an "arbitrary and capricious loophole.”
“It appears that when Tisch arrived, she went after the low-hanging fruit with regards to discipline and corruption, and there was a lot of low-hanging fruit,” Case said. “ But to really show you're about accountability, you have to make sure you bring accountability to the officers on the beat.”
Tisch’s “Buried” Cases
The cases Tisch blocked include lower-level violations of departmental rules, such as an officer using profanity after being punched by a complainant and an officer using her personal cellphone to record an interaction because she hadn’t been assigned a body camera.
Several cases were more serious.
One case Tisch blocked from prosecution was Detective Jonathan Bourne striking Daniella Valerius in the mouth after she bumped into him outside of a crowded concert.
“ I was pushed into him and he turned around, just looked at me and punched me in my mouth,” Valerius said in an interview.
Valerius said Bourne immediately walked away after hitting her, which is corroborated by a bystander’s video of the incident reviewed by Gothamist. Valerius said she chased after him to get his badge number, which he refused to provide while denying that he punched her and threatening to arrest her.
Bourne told city investigators he pushed her with an open palm, according to records. The Civilian Complaint Review Board’s closing report states the videos clearly show Bourne punching her with a closed fist and that her mouth was cut and swollen after the incident.
According to NYPD’s recommended disciplinary guidelines, this type of excessive force would normally be punished by 10 days of suspension and the loss of 10 vacation days. However, in retaining the matter, Tisch said Bourne’s use of force was proper and only punished him for threatening to arrest Valerius by taking away two vacation days.
Officials said that a separate internal affairs investigation disagreed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s investigators, and a three-member panel determined that Bourne accidentally made contact with Valerius’ face while attempting to control the crowd.
“If I was to do something that he did, I could lose my job,” Valerius said, who works for the Department of Social Services in Rockland County. “Especially in the time we are in, if it's recorded and on social media, I would've lost my job right away.”
The detective’s union and NYPD officials did not comment on the case. Valerius is suing the city in civil court.
Police union officials noted that the rise in retained cases under Caban and Donlon matched the increase in substantiated cases that the Civilian Complaint Review Board attempted to prosecute. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry applauded Tisch for retaining the cases she did.
“We need the NYPD to push back on CCRB’s patently biased findings to ensure that police officers are not penalized for simply doing their jobs,” he said.
Muir, the former investigator, said the disadvantage of retaining cases and preventing them from going to trial is that the public never gets a clear understanding about what actually happened.
“If you just have a trial, at least everybody can see what's going on,” he said. “The judge makes their ruling, and then if the commissioner feels it's not fair, we've seen a willingness for them to overrule.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
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Charles Lane
Charles is a Day-of reporter focused on breaking news and enterprise. He’s very friendly and can be reached at [email protected], or more securely on whatsapp/signal 631-295-6715
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