More bad cops go unpunished
Lower discipline rate under Sewell
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell let hundreds of cops off the hook who were found guilty of misconduct — far more than her predecessors, a new study revealed.
Sewell broke with recommendations for discipline from the Civilian Complaint Review Board over substantiated misconduct in more than 400 of the total 754 cases last year.
That left the new commish with only a 46% rate of discipline in police misconduct cases, far lower than the two prior top cops.
Both former commissioners James O’Neill and Dermot Shea logged more than an 80% discipline rate, according to an analysis by The Legal Aid Society.
“The frequency of these departures and their biased reasoning suggest a disregard for the primary goals of the NYPD’s Disciplinary Matrix mandated by the New York City Council — that is, transparent, fair and predictable accountability for officer misconduct,” said Legal Aid fellow Maggie Hadley.
The study, released Thursday, says the city’s top cop sat on 346 cases where the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated police misconduct, allowing the officers to avoid punishment by letting the statute of limitations on the charges expire.
The previously undisclosed cases of misconduct were in addition to 72 other cases in which Sewell (pictured) admitted to not issuing discipline, despite the CCRB recommendation.
She said the reason she broke with the board’s suggestion was because each of those cases was “manifestly unfair.”
The NYPD, though, contends that the cases were sent to the NYPD “with a severely protracted time frame with which to evaluate them.”
“The cases were closed after the CCRB failed to provide these 346 cases to the NYPD within a reasonable time period before the expiration of the statute of limitations,” a police spokesperson said.
CCRB Chair Arva Rice said the oversight agency stands “behind every case where the board found misconduct and recommended discipline.”
“Since February 2020, the board has abided by the NYPD’s Disciplinary Matrix when recommending misconduct,” she said, adding, “We look forward to reviewing the next iteration of the matrix.”