TOP COP & BRASS BAD BOYS IN BLUE
NYPD discipline files bared after court’s OK
The New York Civil Liberties Union published a trove of hundreds of thousands of NYPD disciplinary records on Thursday — revealing a slew of allegations reaching all the way up to Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.
The NYCLU wasted no time in publishing a searchable database of the 323,911 “complaint records” involving nearly 82,000 active and former cops after the US 2nd Circuit of Appeals’ three-judge panel denied police, fire and correction unions’ requests for a stay.
The data includes records on some of the most prominent figures in the NYPD, including Shea.
The top cop was named in eight complaints over four incidents between August 2003 and June 2011, while he was with the department’s Detective Bureau, according to the database. Three of the allegations, all stemming from a 2003 incident, were substantiated by the city’s independent Civilian Complaint Review Board.
The database does not include narrative detail or extensive context for any of the incidents but indicates Shea was found guilty of “abuse of authority” in a vehicle stop-andsearch and ordered to undergo “instruction” as discipline.
Shea was far from the only department brass named in the database.
Chief of Department Terence Monahan, now the NYPD’s highestranking uniformed cop, was named in six “abuse of authority” complaints, at least five of them during the 2004 Republican National Convention, which saw clashes between protesters and police.
None of the half-dozen complaints is marked as substantiated in the database — including four RNC complaints for “retaliatory arrests.”
Nearly a decade later, a federal court jury awarded nearly $200,000 to protesters.
Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison had 21 complaints lodged against him from February 1996 through December 2014, although only one — for “abuse of authority” — was substantiated.
Former Chief of Crime Control Strategies Lori Pollock — who last week sued the NYPD alleging she had been demoted from the post due to her gender — had one “force” complaint filed against her in 1988 that was ultimately withdrawn.
The man who succeeded her, Michael LiPetri, had 25 complaints lodged against him between 2002 and 2016 — three of which were substantiated charges of “abuse of authority” or “discourtesy.”
First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker — twice passed over for the position of top cop — has no alleged infractions in the database.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to request for comment on the release and the records of some of its highest-ranking members.
“History has shown the NYPD is unwilling to police itself,” said Christopher Dunn, legal director of the NYCLU. “The release of this database is an important step towards greater transparency and accountability and is just the beginning of unraveling the monopoly the NYPD holds on public information and officer discipline.”
The suit to keep the records under wraps was brought by all of the city’s police, fire and correction unions.
“We continue to fight the de Blasio administration and the improper dumping of thousands of documents containing unproven, career-damaging, unsubstantiated allegations,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a spokesman for the coalition of unions.