The city’s primary independent police oversight agency has so many board member vacancies — including the chair position — it was initially unable to conduct routine operational matters at its monthly meeting last week.
The 15-member Civilian Complaint Review Board currently has five board openings, Those include a vacant chair after Arva Rice, who’d served as the interim chair since Eric Adams came to office, left in August after she unsuccessfully pushed City Hall for more funds and power.
Two of the vacant board seats are waiting for appointments by the mayor, two by the City Council, and the chair by the Council and mayor.
The empty seats mean the board can only achieve the two-thirds quorum needed to vote on items if every single member shows up. At last Wednesday’s meeting, one mayoral appointee was over 15 minutes late.
The vacancies come as former Police Commissioner Edward Caban reduced punishments in the department’s disciplinary matrix and routinely downgraded recommended discipline for cops who were guilty of violating the constitutional rights of people stopped, questioned and frisked.
The board openings also come after a horrific police shooting in early September on the Sutter Avenue subway platform where officers shooting at a man with a knife also hit two bystanders, leaving one with brain damage.
At the CCRB meeting, some community activists were furious that the board was initially unable to conduct basic business.
“This is an act of disrespect to the people of New York who depend on a quorum,” Michael Meyers, president of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, said during the public comment session of the meeting.
“The blame must go to the mayor and the City Council,” he added. “It’s embarrassing that they have not made the appointments to keep this organization busy and active.”
‘A Recipe for Abuse’
The board, which investigates civilian complaints of police misconduct, has monthly public gatherings to review the status of some cases and personnel matters.
The lack of staff has forced the board to close more than 700 cases of possible misconduct this year without probing them, ProPublica reported earlier this month. Former Police Commissioner Caban has also ignored hundreds substantiated findings by the board of bad behavior.
“At a time when complaints of NYPD misconduct are on the rise, the city should be strengthening the CCRB, not weakening an already disempowered disciplinary system,” Lupe Aguirre, an NYCLU senior staff attorney, told THE CITY.
“Any further move to prevent meaningful oversight is a recipe for abuse,” he added.
On Wednesday, the board was only able to approve the minutes of its prior meeting and get to business after board member John Siegal made it following what he said was a train delay.
Mayoral spokesperson Amaris Cockfield said City Hall was in the process of reappointing two members and appointing two new members to the board.
“Public safety and justice are the prerequisites to prosperity, and the Adams administration continues to work to keep New Yorkers safe fairly,” Cockfield said in a statement. “The CCRB continues to have the resources and approved staffing levels to provide first-rate oversight and ensure police accountability to every community across the five boroughs while we work to finalize appointments.”
The Adams administration has repeatedly tried to cut the CCRB’s budget and to implement a hiring freeze at the board.
The City Council has pushed back and reinstated funding for the board.
“We have consistently advocated for the agency to receive the resources it needs in the city budget to conduct its work and are working to fill vacancies among our appointees,” said Council spokesperson Arendt Desamours.
The legislative body traditionally gives each borough delegation an opportunity to make an appointment. The Staten Island delegation has been vacant since December 2021, records show.
The Council has scheduled a hearing on the issue next month.
A Council insider told THE CITY it has been hard to recruit new board members in part because the Adams administration has tried to undermine it.
“The people who care about these issues tend to be a little skeptical of spending their time,” the Council insider said. “It makes it challenging.”
Undermining the Board
The board vacancies come as Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned in the middle of a federal corruption probe that has touched several members of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration.
Just three days before his departure, the NYPD quietly reduced the suggested punishment for cops guilty of abusing authority, using offensive language, failing to take a civilian complaint, and conducting an unlawful search, THE CITY reported.
The police commissioner has total control over the penalty guidelines.
The CCRB is working on an analysis of the watered- down rules but has not released anything publicly yet, according to a board insider.
The categories of downgraded punishments include: violations of department rules and regulations; abuse of authority; discourtesy and offensive language; firearm-related incidents; off-duty misconduct; and prohibited conduct.
In many of those cases, the so-called mitigated punishment went from the loss of five vacation days or a five-day suspension to merely “additional training,” according to the new 59-page matrix.
The “mitigated punishment” is given to officers who are either first time offenders or have some related excuse for the transgression.
At Wednesday’s board meeting, Meyers, of the Civil Rights Coalition, did not hold back on his opinion of Caban.
“This guy was a terrible police commissioner, and I want to make that for the record, he was a terrible police commissioner and he will not be missed!” he said while also noting the various federal investigations swirling around the Adams administration.
“That the mayor backed him as long as he packed him is an embarrassment to the City of New York — to the people of New York who put that mayor in place,” Meyers added.
Cops in the Wild
As for the subway shooting,critics have argued the police should not have fired in a public space and they contend the NYPD under Adams has emboldened the police to act recklessly in the name of reducing crime.
“The mass shooting of the civilians and a police officer by the NYPD over a $2.90 fare is the latest example of a police force empowered by Mayor Adams to use reckless excessive force without consequence and clear evidence that carceral enforcement fails to make our city safer,” said Communities United for Police Reform spokesperson Loyda Colon.
Adams has defended the shooting, saying it was all triggered by the alleged knife, which police somehow lost.
The cops involved “should be commended for how they really showed a great level of restraint,” Adams told reporters on Tuesday.
“And it’s just unfortunate that innocent people were shot because of that,” he added.
The NYCLU cited the mayor’s comments in noting why City Hall has been slow to staff the CCRB.
“It is no surprise that the city is not taking police accountability seriously,” said the NYCLU’s Aguirre. “Just this week, the Mayor praised ‘restraint’ after a reckless shooting in a subway station instead of calling for an investigation or committing to releasing body camera footage.”
Meanwhile, the NYPD arrested at least 18 people at the station during a protest of the shooting two days later
