A federal monitor who oversees court-ordered reforms to the NYPD has threatened legal action over the department’s refusal to release records on racially biased policing to the city’s police watchdog agency.
Mylan Denerstein, the federal monitor, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that she was considering asking a judge to order the NYPD to turn over information on officers under investigation for racial profiling or bias-based policing, including disciplinary records and information about any prior complaints. The Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations against the police, has complained of persistent stonewalling by the NYPD.
“It is not acceptable for over 100 cases to sit idly while the statute of limitations runs and the city negotiates with itself,” Denerstein wrote in the letter to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres. “Should discussions falter and this issue not be resolved by the city by June 1, 2023, we will seek the court's intervention.”
It is not acceptable for over 100 cases to sit idly while the statute of limitations runs and the City negotiates with itself.
Spokespeople for neither the CCRB nor the NYPD would comment on the monitor’s letter for the record.
The CCRB started a new unit this year to investigate claims of racial profiling and bias-based policing. The City Council passed legislation to create the unit because the NYPD rarely substantiated complaints of racial profiling or bias when its own Internal Affairs Bureau investigated such charges.
Between 2014 and 2021, police found officers had violated policy in just four of the 3,480 filed complaints, or about 0.1% of cases, according to the CCRB.
Lawmakers hoped that a new CCRB unit would be better equipped to review claims of profiling and bias than the NYPD. But since the unit launched last year, its investigators have struggled to get the NYPD records they need to complete their investigations. The team has submitted more than 100 requests, all of which have been denied, according to the CCRB.
The unit is led by prominent civil rights attorney Darius Charney, who was part of the legal team that sued the department over its use of the policing tactic stop-and-frisk. That lawsuit found widespread patterns of racial profiling and bias-based policing and led to a landmark settlement requiring the department to reform its practices, including the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the implementation of those reforms.
Denerstein said waiting to turn over records would make it difficult for the CCRB to complete its investigations within an 18-month legally mandated window.
The CCRB has also struggled to staff up the new unit, which has 20 unfilled posts out of a budgeted 33. At a board meeting earlier this month, Chair Arva Rice said the CCRB would ask the police department to go back to investigating profiling and bias complaints if the watchdog team doesn’t get additional funding for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.
“This is not a decision made in haste,” Rice said at the time. “But this agency owes the people of the city an honest assessment of our ability to do the work.”
Public safety reporter Matt Katz contributed to this article.
