Last month the NYCLU got a hold of 600 pages of the NYPD’s internal reports, and today the Times took an exhaustive look at the serious and petty crime committed by cops. According to documents—which span the period from 1993-2008—an average of 119 officers are arrested annually. Known as the “rat squad” since most of its cases rely on cops snitching on one another (its employees are called “cheese eaters"), many of the Internal Affairs Bureau’s cases involves “drugs, theft or crimes like fraud, bribery or sex offenses, on and off the job.”
But that’s fluctuated over the years, under different mayoral administrations and police chiefs. In 2006, for instance, the reports note an “unprecedented” uptick of abuse of suspects and gave the example of a group of cops that followed a woman suspected of petty theft into a store and “struck her in the head with his firearm for no reason.” You can see excerpts from the reports here, and graphs charting the rise and fall of officer arrests and investigations here.
“History tells us there always will be bad cops, and the department will never be able to completely control that,” said Christopher Dunn, of the civil liberties union, who spent weeks studying the reports. It’s true: recently there’s been a surge in cop DWIs, and other infractions, like an NYPD perfume heist, haven’t been infrequent. Despite the black spots, or perhaps because of them, current police commissioner Ray Kelly claims the IAB is at the top of its game. “For me, myself, personally, it is absolutely critical to the good order, to the function of this department, that we have a well-staffed, a well-trained, a proactive Internal Affairs Bureau, and that’s what we have,” he said.
