Under pressure from his progressive base to reform policing, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Friday that Jennifer Jones Austin, a prominent Black leader, will lead the NYPD watchdog Civilian Complaint Review Board.
The appointment of Jones, an ally of the Rev. Al Sharpton, comes as Mamdani faces criticisms that his administration does not have sufficient Black representation.
Austin, who is a lawyer, currently heads the anti-poverty Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and serves as a vice chair of Sharpton’s National Action Network. Over the years she has been appointed to various roles in state and city government, and served under both the Bill de Blasio and Michael Bloomberg administrations.
"Jennifer Jones Austin has spent her career standing with New Yorkers who are too often shut out of the halls of power,” Mamdani said in a statement. “She understands that public safety and accountability go hand in hand, and that trust must be earned through action.”
The CCRB investigates NYPD members accused of using excessive force, abusing their authority, being discourteous or using offensive language. More recently, the watchdog group’s scope has expanded to also oversee allegations of bias-based policing, racial profiling, sexual misconduct and false statements.
Board members can recommend discipline when they find officers have violated department policy, but the police commissioner has the ultimate say on whether to impose any punishments. As a candidate Mamdani said he wanted the CCRB to have the authority to discipline police, but he later backed away from that stance.
The watchdog has also struggled to manage its caseload amid staffing turnover and budget cuts.
Last year, New Yorkers submitted more than 5,600 complaints about the police with the CCRB. The agency only fully investigated about 2,000 of them, according to an annual report. It took years for the watchdog group to rebound from a pandemic-era backlog, which was exacerbated by a flood of protest-related complaints following George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis.
As a result, civil rights and criminal justice advocates have criticized the CCRB as being toothless. Last year, NYPD Police Commissioner Tisch refused to fire Lt. Jonathan Rivera who was found guilty in an internal police departmental trial of killing Allan Feliz, a Bronx man, during a traffic stop. The CCRB had brought the charges after conducting an investigation.
After the verdict, the CCRB issued a statement, saying the verdict “clearly demonstrates why it is necessary for the CCRB to be empowered with final disciplinary authority in the cases it prosecutes.”
“As chair, I will work to advance CCRB’s critical mission of accountability and look forward to the work ahead,” Austin said in a statement on Friday.
Former Mayor David Dinkins established the CCRB in 1993 to serve as a civilian, independent watchdog of NYPD misconduct. The agency has paid staff members who investigate allegations of wrongdoing and 15 appointed board members who review investigations and vote on whether to recommend discipline. Five members are appointed by the mayor, five by the City Council, three by the police commissioner and one by the public advocate. The mayor and the City Council choose the chair together.
The CCRB has long been at odds with powerful police unions.
The board is currently facing a lawsuit from the Police Benevolent Association, the largest union representing rank-and-file officers, which accused the watchdog agency of tarnishing officers’ reputations by sharing “inflammatory” records about unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, bias-based policing and untruthfulness. After the lawsuit was filed, a CCRB spokesperson defended the agency’s investigations as “complete, thorough and impartial.”
Policing has been a source of tension between the mayor, who has largely deferred to Tisch, and his progressive base. Mamdani has not carried out his promise to disband the Strategic Response Group, a police unit known for aggressive tactics to police protests, or to end the use of a database of suspected gang members. He is also yet to execute a plan to divert some 911 calls away from police under a new Office of Community Safety.
Last month, Mamdani reversed a decision to hire 580 police officers following criticism from lawmakers and advocates.
