SHEA IN THE ‘REAL WORLD’ DAILY NEWS
Accused in five complaints by civilians, disciplined once, before he became commish
Five civilian complaints earlier in NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea’s long career did not result in more than a warning from a superior officer — and did not keep him from becoming New York’s top cop.
As an NYPD captain and later as an inspector, Shea was accused in five city Civilian Complaint Review Board complaints — of an improper stop-and-frisk of a man going to visit his mother, two improper vehicle stops, using excessive force in a street brawl and raiding the wrong apartment in the Bronx, records obtained by the Daily News show.
Shea, who joined the NYPD in 1991, did not receive any complaints when he was working earlier in his career as an officer, sergeant and lieutenant, records show.
Just one of the complaints against him — an improper vehicle stop in 2003 — was “substantiated,” or found
to be true by CCRB standards, the records show. His penalty was minimal — “instructions,” which amount to a talking-to from a superior.
The CCRB is the city watchdog agency charged with investigating civilian complaints of police misconduct.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller, a police spokesman, emphasized that only one of the CCRB complaints resulted in any discipline.
“It is not uncommon for highly active officers engaged in crimefighting to be the subject of complaints,” Miller told The News. “It is inherently unfair to publish allegations that are not supported by facts or proven to be untrue.”
The five complaints span 2003 to 2011, a period when Shea rose to precinct commander. He was “exonerated” in three cases, which means he was cleared of violating the law or police rules. The fifth complaint was “unsubstantiated,” meaning there wasn’t enough evidence for the CCRB to make a case.
“It is clearly in New Yorkers’ interest to know that their police commissioner has a substantiated complaint of misconduct against him from his days as a high-ranking captain,” said Michael Sisitzky, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Taken together, the complaint summaries portray a hands-on commander in the middle of street-level enforcement in the Bronx during the the much-criticized stop-and-frisk era under then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who ran the NYPD from 2001 to 2013.
The earliest complaint against Shea is the only one substantiated by the CCRB. On Aug. 8, 2003, Shea — then with the rank of captain — and two other cops in an unmarked car stopped a vehicle for speeding.
The driver of the car said the cops covered their badges when they approached him and accused him and his “friends” of “zipping.”
The car’s driver claimed he told the officers he didn’t understand the term because “they were not from the streets,” according to the CCRB narrative.
CCRB charges for an illegal car stop and an illegal stop-and-frisk were substantiated. Shea and another officer charged in the incident were given instructions. A third officer involved in the incident retired, apparently before punishment was meted out.
The information provided to The News in this and other incidents isn’t always clear about Shea’s exact role in the matter.
On June 19, 2004, a Bronx man said a car pulled up to his vehicle just as he pulled out of a parking lot so a friend could take over his parking space.
The motorist got scared when, in the CCRB’s telling, “an unidentified male pulled out something black from the [police] car.”
He ran off on foot. When one of the cops caught up to him he realized his pursuer was a police officer. “Thank God you’re a cop,” he said.
The officer threw the man to the ground and twisted his arm, the CCRB reported. The man was arrested and given a summons.
Though CCRB records say Shea was involved in this incident, his role is unclear. He was exonerated of making an improper vehicle stop.
On May 4, 2006, Shea, still a captain, was involved in a raid on a woman’s home in the Bronx. Cops pointed a gun at her and made her get on the ground, she alleged.
She was handcuffed and cops rummaged through her property. The woman said officers wrongly moved and broke some of her possessions.
An older white male officer told her the police were looking for guns and drugs and showed her a warrant, the CCRB says. However, the warrant was in English and she
could not understand it, the CCRB said.
No arrests were made and police did not find contraband. An hour after the incident, the woman called the CCRB.
Shea was exonerated of an allegation of wrongful search.
On June 2, 2011, a man said he and a friend were double-parked outside his home in the Bronx when a police vehicle pulled up. An officer told them to move, a CCRB summary of the incident says.
Another officer argued with the man in the car and told him to “Shut the f—k up.”
The man claimed the officers grabbed him and punched him in the face twice. The cops claimed the man hit an officer and told him, now he was going to get “f——d.”
A third officer allegedly threw the man’s phone against a wall and broke it. On their way to the 44th Precinct stationhouse, the arrestees were repeatedly told to “shut the f—k up.”
The Bronx district attorney’s office declined to press charges against the man and his friend.
By this time, Shea had advanced to the rank of inspector. Though he is named in CCRB papers as having been involved in the incident, his role is unclear. The CCRB decided that the allegation of improper use of force was unsubstantiated.
On June 13, 2011, Inspector Shea and two other cops approached a man in a Bronx subway station and asked him where he was going. The man said he was on his way to his mother’s house.
The officers said he fit the description of someone involved in an “incident” at a nearby store. During a frisk, the man claimed, Shea “jiggled” his scrotum and caused “pain and irritation,” the CCRB records say.
The man then went with the cops to the store. The storeowner cleared the man and no arrest was made. The CCRB exonerated Shea of an improper stop-and-frisk allegation.
The News obtained the complaint summaries from the CCRB via a freedom of information law request. Until this month, such records had been long hidden from public view.
The release of disciplinary records was several years in the making, with police unions fighting to prevent information covered by Section 50-a, the law that since 1976 kept police disciplinary records from public view unless a judge said otherwise.
The law, which also applied to firefighters and correction officers, was repealed last June amid widespread protests over police brutality.
Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD cop who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that five complaints for someone with a tenure as long as Shea’s could just mean the officer was doing good police work rather than sitting by and watching crime happen.
“The way a savvy police administration would read that, on the face of it, is that he was fully deployed and doing real police work,” O’Donnell said. “If you are going to do your job, you are going to attract complaints.”
O’Donnell said it was important to investigate any complaints, especially ones that could indicate a pattern of misconduct. But he said it was also concerning to see an officer with no complaints, which could indicate the cop had stayed on the sidelines while crime happened.
“In the real world of policing it’s perfectly possible to get no complaints, if you do nothing,” said O’Donnell. “The big issue with the NYPD, now more than ever, is people who are selected to do work involve themselves while some don’t.”
As police commissioner, Shea has ultimate say in NYPD disciplinary matters and can overrule administrative judges’ recommended punishments for cops found guilty of wrongdoing.
A sweeping package of police reforms proposed by the City Council would call on the state to strip that power from the commissioner and instead allow the CCRB to dictate punishments. Shea has pushed back against that part of the proposed reforms.
“There is a pretty clear line of accountability,” Shea told Pix11 on Thursday. “If I do a bad job I get fired. I hire the cops, train the cops, I put them in harm’s way and tell them to keep people safe. I discipline them and if they do wrong I fire them. To take that away from me, who has the accountability then?”