On December 7th, Kari Paul was riding the L train when she overheard a trio of cops talking about Muslims. Despite taking place in one of the more public spaces in the city, their conversation was incredibly ugly.

According to Paul, the officers were discussing the influx of Muslims to a neighborhood in Brooklyn where a mutual friend lived.

"[One] cop was like, 'Yeah I heard they don’t like Christmas lights.' One of the other cops was like, 'Well if they don’t like Christmas lights then they can go back to the fucking cave they came from in the Middle East.'" All three officers were in uniform, and all three were white. And they weren't finished.

"'I heard they were mad about his dogs too, they don’t like dogs,'" Paul recalled them saying. “'Yeah, I’d let my dog shit in their yard in purpose,'" adding that he would, in fact, go to the special effort of purchasing dog waste to place in his neighbors' yards.

The conversation went on until all three got off at Lorimer. Here's a muffled clip that Paul was able to catch.

Paul was horrified. She quickly scribbled down the officers' badge numbers and began recording their conversation on her phone, with every intention of reporting what she'd heard. When she got home, she submitted the incident through the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency dedicated to handling police misconduct. Since the CCRB is an entity wholly independent from the NYPD, she thought nothing of entering her personal information, assuming it would be scrubbed before it was presented to the police.

An agency rep called Paul within 24 hours, and asked her to give a statement over the phone. She asked if she would be kept anonymous, and was surprised when the employee told her "no." In fact, the paperwork with her statement and name would handed straight to the very officers against whom she'd filed the complaint.

"That made me think I don’t know if I even want to file this. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid, but I don’t really want the police that I’m filing a report that could get them in trouble to know my name and where I live," she said. "That seems like a not great plan."

Paul asked if there was a way of being kept anonymous, and was surprised when the rep admitted that she wasn't sure, that she'd have to ask her supervisor.

"I was like, is this not a common request that people make?" she wondered.

The question of potential backlash is, in fact, addressed on the FAQ section of the CCRB's website, though it's not entirely reassuring.

"Incidents of retaliation are extremely rare. You should notify us immediately if you are threatened or retaliated against after filing a complaint," it reads.

We reached out to the NYPD's Department of Internal Affairs for a clearer picture of the data on police retaliations. Sergeant Jeffrey Ahn told us he wasn't sure whether such numbers were kept on file.

"It could be recorded somewhere, but we're just not sure where," Sergeant Ahn said. "We're not aware of who holds that info or where it's actually recorded. Do we get complaints? I'm sure we have."

Gothamist also filed a Freedom of Information Law request to determine the exact number of retaliatory actions taken against complainants, but it has yet to be processed.

The CCRB's website states that instances of retaliation against complainants are "extremely rare."

Linda Sachs, the CCRB's director of communications, told me in an email that there are several reasons for sharing a complainant's name with officers, namely, that "in some cases, a name can be important in triggering an officer's memory of an event," which helps the officer to "remember the incident and thereby give a more complete testimony."

This, of course, would not apply to Paul's case, since the officers on the train likely didn't know they were being recorded, and certainly didn't know Paul's identity.

The second reason, according to Sachs, is simply to prove to all parties involved—the CCRB, the public, the police department and the subject officer—that the complaint is real.

"When we show an officer the allegations, the date, time and location of incident and the complainant's name we are putting them on notice that is is a real person and a real event," she wrote, adding that only the complainant's name is given, not their address or contact information.

Chris Dunn, the associate legal director for the NYCLU, said officers would normally be able to identify a person who filed a complaint about a specific incident. Still: "We think that in normal cases the CCRB should not be withholding from officers the identity of those who have filed complaints against them, as officers do have a right to defend themselves," he wrote in an email.

"However, if there are specific reasons to believe an officer may retaliate against a complainant in a particular case, the CCRB should take special steps to assure there is no retaliation.”

Paul was given the option of either opening an investigation on the officers, or attending a mediation session in which they discussed the problem together. She ultimately decided to withdraw her complaint, and finds the CCRB's logic regarding giving the officers her identity questionable.

"Any of the 20-plus people on the train could have recorded them," she said. "I don't see why they need to know who overheard them to jog their memories."