{"id":71489,"date":"2021-03-10T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/over-700-complaints-about-nypd-officers-abusing-protesters-then-silence#1053401"},"modified":"2021-03-10T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T10:00:00","slug":"over-700-complaints-about-nypd-officers-abusing-black-lives-matter-protesters-then-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/10\/over-700-complaints-about-nypd-officers-abusing-black-lives-matter-protesters-then-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 700 Complaints About NYPD Officers Abusing Black Lives Matter Protesters, Then Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n by Eric Umansky<\/a> <\/p>\n \n\n \n

\n

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories<\/a> as soon as they\u2019re published.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n \n

It was one of the most brutal police responses to last year\u2019s Black Lives Matter protests.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

As hundreds of demonstrators were marching peacefully in the Bronx on the evening of June 4, New York Police Department officers blocked their way from in front and then behind, trapping the protesters in an ever-tightening space that footage shows ultimately spanned about three car-lengths.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n\n

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Officers soon waded into the crowd, pepper-spraying, kicking, punching and swinging their batons. \u201cPeople were being stampeded, they would try to get up and they\u2019d get hit again,\u201d recalled Conrad Blackburn, a criminal defense lawyer who was there as a legal observer. \u201cPeople were bleeding from their heads, with cuts all over their bodies. People couldn\u2019t breathe. They couldn\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

About 60 protesters and bystanders were injured, according to a report<\/a> by Human Rights Watch. Video footage<\/a> the organization compiled captures the terror in people\u2019s voices. \u201cWe\u2019re being crushed!\u201d one person screams. Another voice pleads, \u201cMommy!\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n

At the demonstration, overseeing the NYPD\u2019s response, was the top uniformed officer, Chief of Department Terence Monahan.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

A recent federal lawsuit by New York State Attorney General Letitia James says<\/a> that Monahan \u201cactively encouraged and participated in this unlawful behavior.\u201d Other reports<\/a> on the protests<\/a> have also offered scathing criticisms of the NYPD\u2019s response.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

But one voice has been conspicuously quiet: The agency whose sole responsibility is to investigate NYPD abuse of civilians.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, or CCRB, received about 750 complaints<\/a> of officers abusing Black Lives Matter protesters across the city last year. But it has not yet released any findings from investigations into those complaints.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The CCRB declined ProPublica\u2019s request for an accounting of the status of its investigations. It won\u2019t say how many investigations have been closed and how many are still open. Most critically, it won\u2019t disclose how many officers have been charged with misconduct.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The NYPD also did not respond to ProPublica\u2019s questions about any discipline stemming from abuse of protesters.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The lack of disclosure comes as New York City has moved toward more transparency in police discipline. A federal court recently cleared the way for the city to make NYPD officers\u2019 disciplinary records public. Both the CCRB<\/a> and NYPD<\/a> have now published officers\u2019 disciplinary records, though critics have noted<\/a> the limitations of the databases.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n

Created nearly 70 years ago, originally<\/a> as a part of the NYPD, the CCRB has long been cautious about crossing the department it is charged with investigating. It is currently overseen by a 15-member board, with members appointed by the mayor, city council, public advocate and police commissioner.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Internal CCRB communications about its investigations into the NYPD response to the protests give a glimpse of the dynamics involved: They show progress on the investigations has been slowed in part because of the NYPD\u2019s recurrent lack of cooperation \u2014 which ProPublica has previously detailed<\/a> \u2014 and the CCRB leadership\u2019s own caution about confronting it.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

In October, the then-deputy chief of the CCRB\u2019s investigative unit, Dane Buchanan, emailed the agency\u2019s executive director, Jonathan Darche, to say that investigators were \u201cready to schedule Chief Monahan for an interview.\u201d Buchanan asked Darche whether he\u2019d like to discuss it first \u201cor should we just have an investigator reach out to his office to get his availability?\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Darche, who reports to the board, responded that he would handle it himself and raise it in a meeting with the NYPD the next day.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Buchanan continued to check in, but the issue went unresolved for months. Monahan was reportedly finally scheduled<\/a> for an interview to be conducted last Friday, just after he had announced he was retiring from the NYPD after 39 years. The move means Monahan would no longer be subject to departmental discipline.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

As Monahan said he was retiring, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him to help run New York\u2019s COVID-19 response. At a press conference, de Blasio deflected a question about choosing an officer under investigation, saying<\/a>, \u201cI think the message this sends is that we\u2019re moving the recovery forward.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

In a statement, the CCRB told ProPublica it was \u201cnot prepared to interview Chief Monahan in October\u201d and that \u201cit intends to release a report detailing the factors that complicated its investigations into the police response to last summer\u2019s protests.\u201d The CCRB said it will share the results of investigations once they are closed and once federal litigation, such as the attorney general\u2019s suit, is over.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Emails show CCRB staffers had repeatedly raised red flags about the NYPD\u2019s failure to produce evidence. \u201cWe continue to be plagued with false negatives in protest cases,\u201d one staffer emailed in the fall, referring to instances where the NYPD claimed it had no body-worn camera footage of an incident only for the CCRB to later discover footage exists.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Another email cited an example where an officer mentioned in an interview she had activated her body cam during a confrontation with a protester. The NYPD had told the CCRB that no such footage existed.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

\u201cAllegations of us not providing BWC footage is false,\u201d the NYPD said in a statement, referring to body-worn cameras. \u201cWe have spoken with senior executives at the CCRB who state they do not have any complaints and are pleased with the Departments response to providing BWC video.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Other records were also matters of contention. \u201cWe are hitting a critical point with the protest case documents,\u201d Buchanan wrote in October, referring to police records that could help the CCRB identify both officers and civilians. \u201cMany of them have been outstanding for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n

The CCRB did decide to go public about one roadblock. Officers had been refusing to do interviews by video, which the agency was using because of the pandemic. Hundreds of cases were stalled as a result. After the CCRB announced an emergency hearing about it in August, the NYPD ordered<\/a> officers to participate in video interviews.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

But the CCRB stayed quiet on other impediments, and staff were sometimes discouraged from raising them even with the NYPD itself. The agency\u2019s then-head of policy, Nicole Napolitano, wrote in a September email that she had been barred from asking the NYPD about its policies for retention of protest footage. \u201cI just spoke with Matt, and he\u2019s not a fan of me asking TARU any questions,\u201d Napolitano wrote, referring to the CCRB\u2019s general counsel, Matthew Kadushin, and the NYPD\u2019s Technical Assistance Response Unit.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

In the same email, Napolitano noted that she had proposed writing a public report on the NYPD\u2019s response to the summer protests but that Kadushin had instructed her not to, saying it was too early.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Napolitano, Buchanan and two other senior staffers, who together had more than 50 years of experience at the agency, were abruptly <\/a>laid off<\/a> in November in what the CCRB has described as a needed cost-saving restructuring. (The four staffers declined to comment for this article.)<\/p>\n \n \n \n

Emails show Buchanan had continued to follow up about the status of interviewing Monahan until the day he and the others were let go.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The four former staffers filed a <\/a>lawsuit<\/a> in January claiming that they were fired in part for \u201cdemanding greater accountability and transparency with respect to the handling of complaints of police misconduct against NYPD officers.\u201d The suit, which asserts the four were illegally retaliated against for raising concerns, says Darche \u201coften skewed CCRB policies with a view towards currying favor with the NYPD and\/or the Mayor\u2019s Office.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

In one example from 2019 described in the suit, Darche objected to the term \u201cbias based policing\u201d and warned that any employees who used the phrase would be disciplined or fired.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The CCRB declined to comment on the former employees\u2019 lawsuit and did not make Darche or Kadushin available for interviews. The agency pointed to a previous statement by the chair of the CCRB, who was jointly appointed by the mayor and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. \u201cThe difficult but necessary restructuring the CCRB went through last year was motivated by a need for change during this difficult financial time for the City,\u201d said the chair, the Rev. Fred Davie.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

A City Hall spokesperson also said<\/a> at the time that the mayor \u201csupports that step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The CCRB\u2019s lack of independence has long stirred friction within the agency and with City Hall and the NYPD. Its powers have expanded over the years, most notably when it was given subpoena power in the early 1990s. But the agency, which has about 215 staffers and a $20 million budget, does not have direct access to body camera footage and other NYPD records. Instead, it effectively has to rely on the cooperation of the NYPD, which has a budget of nearly $6 billion and is the most powerful agency in city government.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The NYPD has repeatedly been cited for overly aggressive responses to large protests. \u201cIt is deja vu all over again in some ways,\u201d said<\/a> the head of New York City\u2019s Department of Investigation after issuing a scathing report on the NYPD\u2019s response to the Black Lives Matter protests.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n

During the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, an NYPD commander on the scene told hundreds of peaceful protesters, \u201cHave a safe march<\/a>,\u201d then a few minutes later ordered them arrested.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n

A federal judge later ruled there was \u201cnot even arguable probable cause to make those arrests<\/a>.\u201d The city eventually settled a lawsuit over the NYPD\u2019s RNC response for $18 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

The commander at that scene? Terence Monahan.<\/p>\n \n \n\n \n

\n

Do you have information to share about police oversight in New York City? Contact eric.umansky@propublica.org<\/a>. You can also reach him securely via Signal at 917-687-8406.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n\n \n

\n

Mollie Simon<\/a> and Zipporah Osei<\/a> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n \n

This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Eric Umansky <\/p>\n

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that i…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2309,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12581],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71489"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2309"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71750,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71489\/revisions\/71750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}