Sgt. hit over paperwork
Retrained on recording stops as new rules set to take effect
An NYPD sergeant was ordered to undergo retraining after a department review found that about 40 street stops conducted by his team were not properly documented, the Daily News has learned.
The personnel move, ordered by Chief of Patrol John Chell, comes as the NYPD prepares its officers to document thousands more encounters under terms of the City Council's controversial How Many Stops Act.
The 40 stops in question were conducted over several weeks by a group of officers working under Sgt. Edmundo Rivera in the 49th Precinct, police sources said. The precinct covers a big swath of the northeastern part of the Bronx.
Rivera's issues were noted on Jan. 31 during the first Compliance Stat meeting, a 1 Police Plaza confab aimed at taking a closer look a street stops and body-worn camera footage.
Chell, without identifying Rivera by name, told The News that the sergeant “was doing the paperwork incorrectly and sometimes he was late with the paperwork and backdated it to make it appear it was filled out earlier
“We said, ‘Let's take him out of that enforcement type of work,'” Chell added.
“Let's retrain him, and we'll revisit it in a couple of months. He is going to be shown a better way to do it.
“It doesn't replace his work ethic — he's out there doing things other people can't do — but we've got to make sure he's doing things right and protecting the cops he supervises.”
Officers are required to fill out street stop forms within 48 hours of a stop, when their recollection is freshest — even if the stop is caught on body-worn camera video. Stops documented late or improperly raise questions about the validity of the stop, critics have charged.
In a report last summer, a federal-court appointed monitor of the NYPD's handling of police stops and frisks said that as police were stepping up their efforts to fight gun violence, too many Blacks and Latinos were victims of “unconstitutional policing” by officers assigned to Neighborhood Saftey Teams
The monitor, Mylan Denerstein, attended the Compliance Stat meeting, and a spokesman said she will be follow the initiative.
Chell said the department plans to add vehicle stops and pursuits to the list of police actions he wants more closely scrutinized. Regular reviews of stops should help police make arrests that stand up to scrutiny, he said.
“We want to make sure the administrative compliance as it relates to most criminal enforcement mirrors up to each other,” Chell said in an interview. “You have to have it for prosecution purposes. The cop has to do it to make sure they're being constitutionally correct in everything they do.”
Rivera did not respond to a request for comment. His work record includes 77 commendations, according to his officer profile. He also has been involved in 150 felony arrests.
Another website, 50-a.org, shows that Rivera has been the subject of 15 total complaints containing 58 allegations, 16 of which were substantiated. All 16 involved abuse of authority, such as improper stop.
Rivera was also one of four cops involved in a 2015 incident in which Hakeem Kuta, 17, ran from police after he and friends were approached for smoking marijuana in the lobby of a Bronx building.
Kuta and others ran to the roof, followed by police, and at some point Kuta tried to climb over a short wall on the edge of the building and began to fall, police said. His friend, 14, tried in vain to save him, but Kuta fell to the ground, police said.
Rivera, police said, pulled the 14-year-old to safety.
Kuta died two days later. His family sued and the city settled the suit for $100,000, records show.
Rivera and three other officers were investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau — standard practice following such an incident — and were cleared of any wrongdoing, an NYPD spokesman said.