The Civilian Complaints Review Board ‘canceled’ hundreds of cases on the NYPD at the last minute: Police sources
Police sources told The Post that the Civilian Complaints Review Board has “canceled” hundreds of NYPD cases for review with little time left to decide whether to discipline the officers involved.
In one case, the NYPD was fielding nearly 1,000 cases in a month from the CCRB with less than 30 days remaining before a required decision was made, according to sources.
The sources claimed that the CRC sent some cases for review after the statute of limitations expired.
The CCRB and NYPD have 18 months to issue a disciplinary decision against an officer accused of misconduct, with the legal clock beginning on the day the civilian files a complaint.
Word of the tight deadline came days after Legal Aid reported an analysis found NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell has sat on 346 cases The Bahrain Human Rights Council established police misconduct, allowing the officers to avoid punishment by allowing the statute of limitations on the charges to expire.
Last minute cases kept popping up even after timely delivery “concerns” dating back to 2021 were discussed.
Sewell breached CCRB discipline recommendations for proven misconduct in more than 400 of a total of 754 cases last year, according to a legal aid study released this week.
But when the analysis took into account the amount of time the commissioner would have had to consider each case, police sources countered that Top Cop “deviated” from just 70 CCRB cases — and added that in 2022 Sewell agreed with CCRB recommendations by 84 percent. % at that time.
They note that of the 117 cases delivered to her office so far this year, Sewell has agreed to CCRB recommendations 99 times — or 85% of the time.
The tight discipline report schedule came even after the usual 18-month statute of limitations was increased to 26 months during the pandemic.
Prior to COVID-19, the CCRB delivered “about 40 to 50 cases” to the NYPD in any given month.
But in April 2022, for example, the board “canceled” 839 cases in the department, 98% of which had less than 30 working days left before the deadline for a discipline decision expired, the sources claimed.
The New York Police Department maintains that the cases were sent to the NYPD “with an extremely long time frame for their evaluation.”
“If the CCRB thinks the NYPD is doing this on purpose, they need to come forward and provide their own timeline for when they received the complaint, when they started their investigation and how long it took them to reach their conclusion because the clock starts when it starts,” said Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and assistant professor. John Jay College of Criminal Justice: “The complaint is made not when the CCRB presents its findings.”
The Council for the Rights of the Child could not immediately be reached for comment.
