FUDGING THE POLICE ‘FORCE’
NYPD cops are “underreporting” use of force during busts — and failing to comply with new measures meant to increase transparency, according to a new Department of Investigation report.
“Failures to comprehensively and accurately document the use of force by police officers are not only missed opportunities to improve policing, but risk jeopardizing the trust NYPD has worked to build with communities across the city,” DOI Inspector General Philip K. Eure said in a statement.
The report was released just an hour before Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill held a press conference on crime stats.
City investigators probed whether cops have been following the NYPD’s new use-of-force guidelines, which were created in 2016 after a DOI report found the department was in the “dark ages” when it came to reporting.
The new rules require officers to fill out “Threat, Resistance or Injury” or TRI reports when they use force, or when a civilian uses force against them.
Cops must also mention any use of force in their arrest reports, which the NYPD previously used to calculate use-of-force statistics.
The NYPD will use TRI forms to calculate these statistics going forward, sources said.
The DOI analyzed arrest reports that included a resisting-arrest charge from a three-month period in 2016 and found that in at least 30 percent of them, cops stated they didn’t use force — but then declared that they had in their TRI reports.
“This means that officers are underreporting force on arrest reports and, as a result, certain statistics in NYPD’s recent Annual Use of Force Report do not accurately reflect the universe of force incidents,” the report states.
Cops have become better about submitting TRI forms if they have noted a use of force on their arrest reports, the investigation found.
The DOI found that officers failed to submit required TRI forms only 10 percent of the time in 2017.
But some arrests involving force are still unreported, the DOI said.
“In some cases when officers stated on arrest reports that they did not use force, DOI found evidence of officers having used force without submitting a TRI,” the report says.
De Blasio and O’Neill defended the department at the press conference.
“I want to remind everyone we have 36,000 officers. We have over 8.5 million people. There are 365 days in a year,” de Blasio said.
“Only 23 times did an NYPD officer in 2017 discharge a firearm in the line of duty. That’s extraordinary restraint,” he said.