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NYPD's Refusal To Comply With Misconduct Investigations Cost Months Of Time And Effort
By
David Cruz
Published Aug 6, 2020
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Scott Heins / Gothamist
By
David Cruz
Published Aug 6, 2020
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The body that investigates certain kinds of NYPD misconduct says that they are still missing at least 900 officer interviews due to the unwillingness of members of the police department to comply with their investigations, a backlog that will take 12 weeks to clear.
At an emergency meeting held by the Civilian Complaint Review Board on Thursday morning, Dana Buchanan, the agency's deputy chief of investigations, said that figure was a conservative estimate.
"This does not include the number of involved officers that are part of investigations that are in their earlier stages, or cases where officers are still unidentified, and of course, complaints to come," said Buchanan. "If we can't interview officers, then we can't close full investigations."
Buchanan arrived at the 12-week figure using 2019's average number of interviews conducted per day, which was 14.
Compounding that backlog is the 751 complaints filed against officers during the George Floyd protests in the city.
While the COVID-19 outbreak temporarily halted investigations until April, the NYPD and the CCRB then agreed to conduct remote interviews. But NYPD officers, backed by their police unions, refused to show up, and claimed the process was unfair.
"Members of service with the guidance of their counsel simply refused to participate in this remote interview process, the very remote interview process the CCRB had developed with the NYPD," CCRB chair Fred Davie said in a prepared statement during the meeting. "Since April, the CCRB, the agency that New Yorkers expect to hold the NYPD accountable, despite having received hundreds of complaints, despite having negotiated with the NYPD, despite having worked in good faith with the police unions, has conducted fewer than 25 officer interviews."
One day before the CCRB's emergency meeting, and after the meeting had been publicized, the NYPD finally ordered its officers to comply with the law and provide testimony for investigations. The City Charter requires the NYPD to ensure that its officers participate in CCRB inquiries.
"Is it a coincidence that the refusal to participate in virtual hearings coincides with four straight months of overt police misconduct, including unprovoked clubbing, pepper spraying, vehicular assault? And that's just the stuff that we saw on camera," said Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman, who's been critical of the NYPD, at the meeting.
The overwhelming caseload can also result in the final determinations delayed for months, or perhaps years. An analysis of CCRB data provided by ProPublica shows it takes an average seven months for a case to be completed.
John Siegal, a CCRB member, criticized the NYPD's noncompliance.
"The system relies on the good faith adherence to the rule of law and legal process by all the participants, which as [Lancman] indicated, and I think quite clearly, was a breakdown in the rule of law in this process over the last several months," said Siegal.
Asked about the NYPD's resistance on Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio replied, "There are – look, there are individual rights issues and due process issues here. The remote dynamics have been a challenge throughout all parts of the criminal justice system that rely on due process, but we've got to get the CCRB process going aggressively."
In a statement, the NYPD said that its officers were still being interviewed by the Internal Affairs bureau for department investigations, and emphasized its intent to cooperate with the CCRB going forward.
"Any officer who fails to appear, in any form, is subject to discipline. At the same time, the challenges of an ongoing global pandemic that has strained us all requires our focused rigor in creating solutions for communicating and collaborating in safe ways on matters of utmost importance."
Late last month, ProPublica published a portion of the CCRB's data that showed officers who have had substantiated cases of misconduct. Gothamist analyzed that data, and also took a closer look at the officers who had been promoted, despite having the worst disciplinary records in the department.
Tagged
nypd
CCRB
police misconduct
David Cruz
David is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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