NYPD plans to adopt guidelines for disciplining officer misconduct
New York — When the New York Police Department fired an officer last year for putting Eric Garner in a deadly chokehold, the officer’s union argued that there was little, if any, precedent within the department’s internal disciplinary system for such a penalty.
Now, the nation’s largest police department is spelling out potential ramifications for officer misconduct, unveiling on Monday a draft of a discipline matrix that will guide punishment decisions similarly to how sentencing guidelines are used in criminal cases. It will be adopted after a 30-day public comment period.
“We wanted to make it very, very clear that if you do certain things there are certain consequences,” said Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo, who helped develop the disciplinary policies with help from department officials and outside agencies.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called it a “big step forward for transparency and accountability.”
Police reform advocates weren’t as enthused, arguing the NYPD still has too much power policing its own and that it rarely enforces top penalties, with just 12 officers fired for misconduct since the mid1980s.
“The new guidelines are important to have in place, but no reason to celebrate without evidence of a culture change in policing,” said Michael Sisitzky, lead policy counsel at the New
York Civil Liberties Union.
The head of the city’s largest police union blasted the guidelines for different reasons, painting them as a way for elected officials “to manipulate NYPD discipline to further their radical political goals.”
“Apparently mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines are unfair to criminals but perfectly fine for cops,” said Pat Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, suggesting the guidelines would be subject to change “based on headlines and poll numbers, rather than any objective sense of justice or fairness.”
The NYPD is shifting to formal disciplinary guidelines at a time when law enforcement agencies around the world are being pressed to be more transparent about discipline in the wake of protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in May.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, who still will have the final say on discipline, said it was important to have a “road map” so the public and officers know what to expect. Development of the matrix was well underway when the City Council passed a law in June mandating its use. The law also requires that the public be informed how often Shea deviates from it.
Around the same time, state lawmakers sought to shed more light by repealing a decades-old law that had kept police disciplinary files secret. Police unions suing to block their release are appealing after a judge ruled last week that they should be made public.
A 48-page draft report lists presumptive penalties for dozens of forms of misconduct, including termination for using deadly physical force without justification, engaging in hate speech and making a false statement.
Among the other items covered in the matrix: If an officer forgets to turn on his or her body camera while responding to an incident, he or she can be suspended or docked three days, but if it’s done intentionally, it’s a 20-day punishment.
Accessing confidential information can be punished with a 10-day suspension or loss of vacation days, while leaking confidential information to the news media can be punished with a 20-day suspension or loss of vacation days.
Chokeholds resulting in death and the intentional use of a chokehold also are grounds for firing. The NYPD has long banned chokeholds and state and city lawmakers recently passed laws explicitly outlawing the tactic. The state law was named for Garner, who died in 2014 after then-Officer Daniel Pantaleo took him to the ground and put him in a chokehold.
In developing a discipline matrix, the police department is fulfilling one of the last remaining recommendations from a panel of criminal justice experts that then-police Commissioner James O’Neill enlisted two years ago.