New York Police Commissioner Edward Caban on Tuesday night issued a five-page assertion defending how he has dealt with officer self-discipline within the yr since he was appointed to guide the division.
The assertion, posted on the social media platform X, got here in response to a narrative printed final week by ProPublica and The New York Occasions that detailed how Caban has buried dozens of circumstances of alleged police misconduct involving officers accused of, amongst different issues, wrongly utilizing chokeholds, deploying Tasers and beating protesters with batons. Some episodes have been so critical {that a} police oversight company, the Civilian Grievance Evaluation Board, concluded the officers doubtless dedicated crimes.
Caban, ProPublica discovered, has prevented 54 officers from going through a public disciplinary trial in his roughly one yr in workplace — a tactic referred to as retention. His predecessor, Keechant Sewell, did it eight instances in her first yr.
Nicely earlier than our story was printed, we requested for an interview with Caban and despatched the New York Police Division detailed questions on our reporting. In response, the division supplied a one-sentence assertion: “The NYPD continues to work intently with the Civilian Grievance Evaluation Board in accordance with the phrases of the memorandum of understanding.” That memorandum offers the commissioner the authority to preemptively finish circumstances and not using a trial.
On Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams was requested at a press briefing about our story. “I’ve dedicated my life to police reform and correct policing,” he stated. “I monitor these circumstances, I don’t intrude. However I’m very clear on what I anticipate. We’re going to have a police division that’s skilled.” Adams supplied his full help to Caban, saying the commissioner has “been extraordinarily clear in doing that.”
Caban adopted with the five-page assertion taking subject with the story.
He recognized no inaccuracies however as a substitute argued that the story was unfair. “Nobody is extra invested in a good, efficient, and environment friendly NYPD self-discipline course of than I’m,” Caban wrote. “Any suggestion that my dealing with of an extremely advanced, collaborative course of undermines these requirements merely doesn’t survive trustworthy scrutiny.”
Caban additionally argued that he was extra environment friendly and efficient at administering justice than the Civilian Grievance Evaluation Board.
Listed here are a couple of of Caban’s assertions and what our reporting discovered:
“This was and stays an open course of.”
When the CCRB adjudicates misconduct accusations, its legal professionals function prosecutors at an NYPD trial that’s open to the general public, the place proof is offered and officers are questioned about what occurred.
When the commissioner retains a case, he decides in non-public whether or not the officer’s habits was justified, and he alone determines whether or not they need to be punished. He sends a letter to the CCRB laying out his causes, however the division doesn’t publish the letter, and the CCRB solely does so months after the actual fact.
The method is so opaque that civilians we interviewed about their pending misconduct circumstances didn’t know that the circumstances had been swept away.
Once we instructed Brianna Villafane that the commander who grabbed her by the hair and yanked her to the bottom throughout a Black Lives Matter march had been cleared by the commissioner, she gasped and shook her head. “Who am I purported to name to really feel protected now?” Villafane requested. “Not him.”
“Each time I’ve retained a case, it’s in compliance with” the memorandum of understanding’s “mutually understood tips and agreed upon tips.”
ProPublica’s reporting exhibits this isn’t the case. One of many few limitations on a commissioner’s skill to finish circumstances is that he might solely accomplish that for officers with clear data.
We discovered a number of situations the place the commissioner ended the circumstances of officers whose data included earlier substantiated circumstances of misconduct.
The division’s public info workplace didn’t reply to questions on these circumstances for our authentic story and the mayor’s chief counsel didn’t reply to the same query at Tuesday’s information convention. On Wednesday, ProPublica requested the police division about these circumstances once more, and the division didn’t instantly reply.
“Law enforcement officials face unparalleled penalties.”
We tracked the punishment that Caban has given within the circumstances he short-circuited. Forty p.c of the time, he gave officers no punishment in any respect.
Within the circumstances wherein he has ordered self-discipline, it has largely been gentle, such because the loss of some trip days. Essentially the most extreme punishment, we discovered, was a case wherein he docked an officer 10 trip days.
In additional than 30 different situations, Caban upended circumstances wherein officers themselves had already agreed to punishment, doing so extra instances than another commissioner in at the very least a decade.
“Previously yr, the sheer variety of circumstances that I’ve adjudicated has significantly elevated, so it is just logical that the variety of circumstances I retain would improve as nicely.”
ProPublica checked out this very subject. In line with CCRB knowledge, Caban had confronted 409 circumstances from the company in his first 11 months, in comparison with 521 circumstances for his predecessor, Sewell, in her first yr.
One factor we discovered that the commissioner didn’t handle:
Retention just isn’t the one manner the NYPD has been blocking circumstances.
As we reported, there are seven circumstances wherein the NYPD has, since final summer season, declined to formally notify officers of fees introduced in opposition to them. With out such notification, there might be no disciplinary trial.
These circumstances embody chokeholds, Tasings and beating a youngster with a baton. Each was so critical that the CCRB concluded that the officers’ conduct was doubtless legal. And there’s no public disclosure when the division merely doesn’t inform an officer, successfully stalling the case indefinitely.
We requested the NYPD and the commissioner about these circumstances for our earlier story. They didn’t reply.
Do you may have details about the police we must always know? You possibly can e mail Eric Umansky at [email protected] or contact him securely on Sign or WhatsApp at 917-687-8406.
