New York City Police Department corruption and misconduct

[1] Criminal justice advocates report that public access to information about NYPD misconduct is increasingly constrained, particularly due to the department's controversial 2016 reinterpretation of section 50-a of the New York Civil Rights Law.

Torsney was found not guilty by insanity defense (automatism of Penfield epilepsy) in 1977 and was committed to Queens Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital until July 1979 when state reviewers declared him no longer a threat to himself or society and released him, although he was still denied a disability pension.

[9] Officer O'Keefe was assigned to the NYPD's 34th Precinct, a station house that became the target, just one month before Garcia's shooting death, of a federal investigation over allegations of police corruption.

[28] Nick Pinto of Village Voice wrote that "information provided by the NYPD in the trial was fabricated to such a degree that the allegations made by the police officers have turned out to be quite literally the opposite of what actually happened.

[43] On July 17, 2014, at 4:45 p.m., Eric Garner was approached by NYPD plainclothes police officer Justin Damico, in front of a beauty supply store at 202 Bay Street in the Tompkinsville neighborhood in Staten Island.

[51] As a result of Garner's death, Police Commissioner William Bratton ordered an extensive review of the NYPD's training procedures, specifically focusing on the appropriate amount of force that can be used while detaining a suspect.

[58] However, it soon revealed that the health care aide, whose thick African accent made it hard for Garcia and the assisting officers to understand what he was saying, merely went into the wrong apartment and charges were dropped when it was proven that his patient lived in the same building.

When the LGBTQ community in New York City organized a memorial march, one week after Matthew Shepard died of injuries sustained during an attack, the NYPD responded in riot gear and on horseback, arresting 96 people and using some violent tactics,[70] triggering at least one federal, constitutional rights violations lawsuit.

"[76] Among other actions causing controversy toward the NYPD, a thousand people were detained under conditions, including overcrowding, dirtiness, and contamination of oil and asbestos, described as unfit for detention.

[82] The NYPD procured and has deployed Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), also known as a sound cannon, as a non-lethal, crowd-controlling military weapon that can cause injury and is intended to disrupt protests.

[86][87] In 2014, large-scale protests took place in New York City following the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Akai Gurley in Brooklyn.

In response to these protests, the NYPD made large numbers of arrests and deployed the uses of pepper spray and mobile LRADs to disrupt activists, long regarded by many as controversial.

[98][99][93] In September 2020, Human Rights Watch published a 99-page report documenting a coordinated attempt by NYPD officers to "kettle", assault and mass arrest peaceful protestors in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx on June 4, 2020.

[124] Moreno and Mata were, however, found guilty of official misconduct for going back into the woman's apartment three times without alerting their superiors and making erroneous calls to 911 with claims of a nonexistent homeless man loitering in the area to facilitate their return to the premises.

[136] According to Associated Press, "[a] months-long investigation... has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government.

As the New York Daily News reported, as of May 2018, Scarcella's homicide cases had resulted in wrongful convictions for at least 13 individuals with a combined 245 years in prison, and the city and state had paid at least $53.3 million in legal settlements because of his "shady investigations involving tainted evidence, misleading testimony or forced confessions".

[162] On March 30, 2015, an Uber driver was "pulled over" by Detective Patrick Cherry[163] a 15-year veteran of the NYPD who was assigned to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City.

[164] His xenophobic and profanity-filled[165] tirade and threats of arrest for making a "mild" gesture at the detective for not properly signaling has highlighted what other drivers-for-hire have called a pattern of abuse and discrimination by the New York City police.

[168] Furthermore, it had a simple LED blue and red flasher on the dash, a color combination not used by police in the state of New York,[169] raising additional questions if this was a personally-owned car and not one which he had the right to use in traffic stops.

[173] The New York Daily News revealed that 55 officers had each been sued for misconduct 10 or more times since 2006, resulting in settlements and judgements that totaled over $6 million of the $1 billion paid during the period to cover all civil suit judgements/settlements against the NYPD.

During an audit of a four-month period in 2014, fifty-five instances of alleged discrepancies were discovered between radio call response activities and complaint reports that led to a deliberate misreporting of crimes.

[179] The federal corruption investigation has also reportedly focused on former Chief of Department Philip Banks, who allegedly received gifts from one of the two businessmen with close ties to Mayor de Blasio.

[180] Under anxious conditions, with senior police officers expecting indictments to be handed down as a consequence of the investigation, NYPD Inspector Michael Ameri reportedly killed himself by shooting himself in the head while he sat in his department-issued car.

[185] On December 7, 2018, NYPD officers violently separated a one-year-old boy from his mother, Jazmine Headley, who was at the New York City Human Resources Administration awaiting an appointment for a daycare voucher.

[190] Julie Salazar, the New York State Senator whose district includes the Broadway Junction stop, criticized the officers' actions as "criminalizing" a person who was trying to make a living.

Prompted by allegations of corruption in police and court systems, the Hofstadter Committee heard testimony from a thousand citizens, policemen, judges, lawyers and defendants about unjust treatment before the law.

"[211] From 1949 to 1950, deputy assistant Brooklyn District Attorney Julius Helfand conducted a probe into allegations that bookmaker Harry Gross' $20 million a year operation was protected by members of the NYPD and city government.

[221] Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani formed a community-relations task force after Abner Louima was brutally attacked by several police officers in a Brooklyn precinct house.

Furthermore, according to The New York Times, the dissenting report made a recommendation, "the creation of an independent special prosecutor's office with the powers to prosecute police brutality and corruption," but the majority of the task force had rejected that proposal.

Philip Eure, the inspector general of the NYPD, told The New York Times, "Obviously, we are going to be looking at a broader sample of cases to see if it's more systemic, but people should be troubled by the disconnect that we determined exists already in the disciplinary process.