Among the policy victories won by the 2020 protest movement in New York was the repeal of “50-A”, the law that kept police misconduct records secret from the public. Since its recent repeal, both the New York Civil Liberties Union and ProPublica filed Freedom of Information requests for the data pertaining to the NYPD. The ProPublica data dropped first and we were among the first to map its contents.
The police union sued to tie up the release of the data in the NYCLU suit, because this data was broader in scope. In this lawsuit, a map which we published with the ProPublica data was cited in an amicus brief making the argument that the release of more such data is in the public interest. And thanks to a favorable ruling in that lawsuit, the full data set of all misconduct complaints against officers of the New York Police Department made to the Civilian Complaint Review Board is now public.
We can explore this data now, noting that it has been kept secret for decades and is now public thanks to the hard fought victories of the people in the streets. The story of this map is clear to anyone familiar with the racial geography of New York.
When the woman in Central Park who called the police on a black birdwatcher in a now viral incident was charged with filing a false police report, Mayor De Blasio applauded the charge, and warned that had the police shown up, the encounter could well have been fatal.
The mayor constantly speaks on the subject of violence and discrimination by the NYPD as if the NYPD does not answer to him, as if he did not appoint the police commissioner, as if he does not have the power to fire the police commissioner, as if he is not actually the mayor of New York, and as if he has not been the mayor for the last 6 years.
In theory, no innocent person should have anything to worry about if the police are called on them. The mayor broadcasts that he does not trust his own police department not to murder an innocent black man, but speaks on it entirely as if it is run by someone else.
New York City is approximately 42.8% Black and/or Non-White Hispanic according to the Census Bureau, but 70.8% of misconduct complaints against currently active NYPD officers who have had at least one complaint against them substantiated have been made by black and/or Hispanic people, according to the freshly released “50-A” data that is newly public. Additionally, 16.5% of complaints do not have racial information on the complainant. White people account for only 8% of complaints, and Asians 1.5%.
Slightly more than 1 in every 10 active duty NYPD officers has had a complaint against them substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which makes the crime rate of the NYPD significantly higher than that of the public at large.