--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's been just about three months since the world watched the video footage of George Floyd dying at the hands of Minneapolis police.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the weeks that followed, police reform was top of mind. We had protests, we had pledges, there was a chaz and then a chop.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what do things look like now that there aren't as many protests or occupations, now that people are thinking about the election or reopening schools or even the NBA or NHL playoffs?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On today's show, we're going to take a look at the struggle to hold the biggest police department in the country accountable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're talking about the $6 billion and nearly 40,000 officers of the NYPD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eric Umansky has been writing about the NYPD for ProPublica.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More specifically, he's been writing about how civilians can file complaints about officer misconduct.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there were a lot of those complaints in the weeks of protests after George Floyd's killing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we started much earlier than that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last Halloween, my wife Sarah and our then six-year-old daughter were walking home from a friend's house.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And all of a sudden, they saw basically a few teenagers running and then, bizarrely, a unmarked police car going the wrong way up Court Street, which is a one-way street.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So literally zooming against traffic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then all of a sudden, the car hit one of the teens.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is right literally in front of Sarah, my wife and our daughter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kid kind of rolled up onto the hood of the car, rolled right off and slammed onto the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then amazingly enough, got up, ran away, and then the police who were there turned their attention to another group of kids who seemed to have nothing to do with the kids who were running, except for the fact that they were all black.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They lined them up against the wall of our local movie theater, actually, and began to arrest a few of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At this point, right, keep in mind, it was also our six-year-old daughter who was dressed as a vampire and completely freaked out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they came home, and I was sort of just chilling at home, and Sarah, my wife, said, you should go up there and see what's going on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when I got there, there were three kids who had already been put in a police van.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was clear some family members were there of kids who had been stopped and actually put against the wall, not arrested, who were upset.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of those mothers tried to get one of the kids who was arrested to share his parents' phone numbers so that she can say, like, so I can tell your parents that you've been arrested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the cops, plainclothes cops, started getting in her face and yelling at her and telling her to back the fuck off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I remember it very distinctly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At this point, do you have any idea what these kids might have done?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does anyone have any idea what these kids who have been arrested might have done?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At that point, it was completely unclear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the truth is, I then didn't really know what to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I had given my phone number to one of the kids who had been stopped but not arrested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just sort of like, I don't know, that's a best practice, I suppose, if you're a real reporter, which I'm not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm really an editor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I went home, and about 15 minutes later, that kid actually FaceTimed me and was like, you should come to the local precinct, which is literally on my street two blocks away, because my friends are arrested, the parents aren't being allowed to see their kids, and you should just come.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I was like, okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I came and I ended up hanging out with the parents outside the precinct for three plus hours, where indeed they were not allowed to see their kids.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They actually hadn't been contacted by the NYPD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was friends and family who had told them their kids had been arrested.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, I don't know what the rules are about any of this stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you allowed to drive the wrong way down a street?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you allowed to hold kids for hours without calling their parents?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you forgot, are you allowed to run over a kid and then not do anything about it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you allowed to run over a kid and not doing anything about it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And like the whole thing was just bizarre.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you have to keep in mind, I mean, these parents are sitting there fretting all night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, one kept saying, you know, my kid is school the next day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What am I supposed to do?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it started being like midnight and then past midnight.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And another mom there actually kept saying she was upset with herself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She kept saying, I knew I shouldn't let my boy go out on Halloween.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A bunch of black boys walking around together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's a bad idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I shouldn't have let him do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he just kept begging me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And basically, you know, the cops weren't really paying them any attention, the parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't sort of come out and really sort of talk to him and explain the situation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The most helpful cop, and there was one helpful cop, was basically on a smoke break and was like, how are you guys doing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's going on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, went inside of his own volition to find out what was happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the kids were allowed to leave well past midnight at about 1 a.m.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They were given no paperwork.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was nothing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They weren't charged with anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They weren't told they were being charged with anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was just sort of like you know we probably have the wrong people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that it
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These kids were arrested held in jail for a while and then let go never really finding out what they were arrested for?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So eventually, and the kids had been asked about it, there was a robbery in a nearby park.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a kid had had his cell phone stolen and apparently had kind of been beaten up or kicked in the process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, the police had said that these kids, quote unquote, fit the description.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, again, these kids didn't actually look anything like the kids who were running.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If those kids had anything to do with it, I have no idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, one officer, a sort of senior officer came out and it was basically acknowledged that they didn't have the right kids.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was like, look, I'm sorry, everybody.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know that this is a hassle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're just waiting for headquarters to process the paperwork and we're letting you guys go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was clear he was like our bad, right, without formally apologizing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's the end of that night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I went home and I was like, what happens now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is somebody responsible for checking out whether this was appropriate?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there some check on this system?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And on a very basic level, like, what the hell happened?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I did a very basic thing, which I just called the NYPD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I said, you know, this is what I saw.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is what my family saw.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you help me understand what the deal is?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The NYPD's spokesman, by the way, is a former New York Times police reporter, a guy named Al Baker, who's very nice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And said, yeah, let me check it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, great.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he came back to me and said, look, you know, I checked it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know what your wife saw, but a police car did not hit a kid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, well, my wife saw it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he said, I understand.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I am telling you that the people involved, you know, say it didn't happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, memory is a difficult, complicated thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I went back to my wife and I said, please say this didn't happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she said, I am 100% sure it happened right in front of us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I thought like, well, I'm going to look like an asshole here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But nevertheless, I'm going to go canvas the neighborhood and stores nearby and restaurants nearby to see if you can find other witnesses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so that's what I did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I just walked around the neighborhood.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And eventually I walked into a restaurant and I said, hey, I'm looking to see if you guys were open and if anybody saw this weird thing on Halloween.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the guy said to me, you mean where the cop car ran into a kid?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I said, yeah, that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was the first of three other people I spoke to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And eventually I went back to the police and I said, look, I now have four people, including my wife, who saw, they all said they saw exactly the same thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A police car going the wrong way down a one-way street and hit a kid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I want your on-the-record response to that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They said, OK, and sent me a response that said an unknown male who had fled the scene ran across the hood of a stationary police car.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let me just sort of translate that, which is to say the car didn't hit the kid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The kid hit the car.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I said to them, I'm going to be really clear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have four people who saw this, including my wife.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'm going to include your response.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to put it right against the fact that four individual people saw this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five, by the way, if you include our six-year-old daughter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they said, yeah, go for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was kind of dumbfounded.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is brazen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to me, it sort of raised this more fundamental thing of like, if you sort of feel like you can do that, if you have that sense of kind of impunity where you can just say, don't believe all four or five of your lying eyes, you should believe what we're just telling you without, by the way, any evidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't provide any evidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They provided a statement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, that's really troubling and sort of suggests the kind of mindset of impunity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I did a tweet thread about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when I did the tweet thread, this agency I hadn't really heard much about called the Civilian Complaint Review Board that does exactly what it says, reviews civilians' complaints of police abuse, said, thanks for this, we're investigating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And quite frankly, I sort of patted myself on the back and felt like, you know, impact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what investigative journalists are supposed to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And thank you very much, everybody, and have a good night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then I actually met with somebody from the CCRP.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was like, yeah, so tell me how you guys work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he was like, so listen, we are completely independent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We do our own investigations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We come to our own conclusions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, then the police commissioner has complete and utter discretion to just ignore or overturn everything we find.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was like, what?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Say that last part again?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After the break, the CCRB's decades-long battle to hold the NYPD to account.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Eric, before we get to what happened to this kid who got hit by the unmarked police car, tell me about the history of this civilian complaint review board, the CCRB.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So about 70 years ago, a coalition of community activists and community organizations basically got together and said, we're fucking sick of the police abusing black and brown residents.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And we need to create a mechanism for accountability here.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And the city kind of was like, for a little bit.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And a few years later, though, did create this thing called the Civilian Complaint Review Board that, and I think this is quite telling, was consisted of 100% top NYPD officials with no actual civilians on it.
--:-- Eric Umansky: What?
--:-- Eric Umansky: The civilian part was, yes, yes, they're civilians who are making the complaints, but the board isn't actually civilians.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And that central tension of, yes, it's civilians, but the NYPD really kind of holds the string behind the scenes has been a dynamic now throughout its whole life in, you know, ways that it has evolved, but that you can very much see the original DNA.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And what the other thing you can see is that it has long been a subject of intense scrutiny and pressure from not only the police, but police unions in particular.
--:-- Eric Umansky: When in the 1960s, Mayor Lindsey moved to actually make it a civilian board, the unions forced him to actually roll it back.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And, you know, some of what they said was just explicitly racist.
--:-- Eric Umansky: You know, you had this one union leader who said, I'm sick and tired of minorities constantly griping.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Who won that fight?
--:-- Eric Umansky: The unions.
--:-- Eric Umansky: The unions.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And then, you know, about 25 years later, Mayor Dinkins, David Dinkins, who was the first black mayor of New York City, actually moved to make it again a civilian board because it was literally a unit of the police department.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And at that point, the unions organized off-duty officers who, I'm not even sure basically is the right word, who literally rioted.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Thousands of cops stormed through the barricades and ran on top of cars as they charged the stairs of City Hall.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Their message rang loud and clear.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Dinkins must go!
--:-- Eric Umansky: Dinkins must go!
--:-- Eric Umansky: Dinkins must go!
--:-- Eric Umansky: Dinkins must go!
--:-- Eric Umansky: And held up all sorts of signs that were very clearly racist.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Like one said, fire the washroom attendant, referring to Dinkins.
--:-- Eric Umansky: and that kind of outburst and the riot, which, by the way, one of the speakers at it was somebody whose name will ring a bell, Rudy Giuliani.
--:-- Eric Umansky: The mayor's arch rival, Rudy Giuliani.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Yeah.
--:-- Eric Umansky: The reason the morale of the police department of the city of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone.
--:-- Eric Umansky: David Jenkins!
--:-- Eric Umansky: But those changes actually held.
--:-- Eric Umansky: It became a independent entity, which is to say it no longer was part of the police department.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And it got more authority under the law.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But the sort of culture and the politics of it have still stymied it over the years.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Okay, so the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the CCRB, is sort of a joke in its incipient stages, but it's mandated by law.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And after these hard-fought battles, it's more autonomous.
--:-- Eric Umansky: It actually has civilians on it, but it still struggles against a very powerful NYPD.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And surely it's a very powerful union.
--:-- Eric Umansky: How has it operated in the past few months when we've seen, you know, NYPD officers ramming protesters with their vehicles or shoving a young woman to the ground or pepper spraying people who aren't even resisting.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Right.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So you have a record number of abuse complaints that are coming in to the CCRB.
--:-- Eric Umansky: They got hundreds from just the protests.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And it now has about 200 staffers, and they're trying to go through this stuff.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But what they're facing is massive, you can come up with a variety of words for it.
--:-- Eric Umansky: One would be obstruction by the NYPD, which means in practice, you know, one of the things that we've all seen is really critical is video footage, for example.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And officers in New York City are now required to wear body cam footage.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But increasingly, the NYPD is not sharing it at all.
--:-- Eric Umansky: When they do share it, they're redacting footage that for whatever reasons they deem appropriate.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And they're taking an increasingly long time with it.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And all of that creates enormous difficulties for civilian investigators to actually come to conclusions on cases.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And so the system is completely gunked up now.
--:-- Eric Umansky: You know, the way I've described it is like a big river coming in, and at the end of the day, there's this tap, and you turn it on, and a drop comes out every once in a while.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So what's the likelihood that a record number of complaints that came out of the protests will be addressed?
--:-- Eric Umansky: What's the track record?
--:-- Eric Umansky: So I looked at that question, and just to give you a sense, I looked at 3,000 allegations, complaints about use of force in 2018.
--:-- Eric Umansky: It looked at 2018 because it allows some time to go through the system.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So what happened to those 3,000 complaints of use of force?
--:-- Eric Umansky: They turned into 73 quote substantiations which is to say the CCRB was able to figure out and conclude that mistreatment occurred
--:-- Eric Umansky: And the worst that happened to any officer was nine officers who faced get ready for it, loss of vacation days.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So 3,000 accusations, allegations, 73 substantiated, nine officers lose vacation days?
--:-- Eric Umansky: And that's the most significant punishment.
--:-- Eric Umansky: That's the nine officers that face the most significant punishment.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So the one shot civilians have of holding the police department that they pay for to account is virtually toothless.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Is that what you're saying?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Yeah, that's basically what I'm saying.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I mean, you know, there are these other mechanisms that exist in, you know, on paper, too.
--:-- Eric Umansky: You could sue the NYPD.
--:-- Eric Umansky: That is very difficult to do.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And by the way, if you happen to get some money, it's the city that's paying it out, not the officers, not getting the officers punished.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And, you know, then every seven blue moons, there is some criminal charges that is extraordinarily rare.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Like when someone gets killed by cops, maybe.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I mean, frankly, underline on maybe.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But what about this moment?
--:-- Eric Umansky: I mean, if the CCRB can't hold the NYPD to account when it seems like the whole country, if not at least the city, is demanding it, who?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Mayor de Blasio, right?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Is he going to do something about this?
--:-- Eric Umansky: About police brutality, about unchecked use of force?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Yeah, a number of people said to me, look, this is on the mayor at the end of the day.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And you see this dynamic, I think, in a lot of cities, which is, you know, the United States, there is obviously a long history and culture of civilian control over the armed forces, over the military.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And we don't really even think about, of course, the police are under civilian control.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I mean, they work for, you know, local authorities.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But then you look at actually how it really works and you're like, no, they don't.
--:-- Eric Umansky: They don't really truly answer to the mayor.
--:-- Eric Umansky: For whatever reason, mayors have been incredibly reticent to enforce that civilian oversight.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And, you know, I can't get into mayors' minds.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I know that unions are very powerful.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I know that there's concerns, and you've seen it in lots of places, that, you know, the police essentially will step back from doing their jobs and then you're screwed.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And, you know, there are all sorts of fears about how police could screw with you.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And at the end of the day, many, many mayors have said, like, I'm not going there.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Is it a done deal?
--:-- Eric Umansky: You know, is there no going back from the NYPD dictating what the CCRB gets to investigate and doesn't get to investigate?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Is there no going back from mayors living in fear that their police departments might turn on them if they try to impose reforms?
--:-- Eric Umansky: No, I don't think it's a done deal at all.
--:-- Eric Umansky: I mean, if you look at, for example, the CCRB's history, one of the interesting things here is that when civilian officials do stand up and say, in Arabic, like enough, right?
--:-- Eric Umansky: They actually often do get results.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So just the other week, the CCRB said, enough, officers need to come to interviews and we're going to make us think about this.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And the NYPD backed down
--:-- Eric Umansky: 30 years ago when Mayor Dinkins said, I am going to make this an actual civilian board and not a part of the police department.
--:-- Eric Umansky: The police unions fought really hard.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And then what happened is Dinkins won.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Right?
--:-- Eric Umansky: So I don't think it's at all a fait accompli at all.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And people should not presume, in fact, that the history of this is it's sort of ever thus.
--:-- Eric Umansky: In fact, if you think about it in the long arc, it's been getting more authority over the years.
--:-- Eric Umansky: But it's just that when you look at it, there's still so far to go.
--:-- Eric Umansky: Yeah.
--:-- Eric Umansky: What came of the complaint that was filed over the kid who got hit by the car that your wife witnessed last Halloween?
--:-- Eric Umansky: Right.
--:-- Eric Umansky: So this is going to be very not surprising.
--:-- Eric Umansky: That complaint is still open and is, you know, like 3,000 or so other complaints is in the we're currently investigating file.
--:-- Eric Umansky: And the NYPD's party line is that never happened.
--:-- Eric Umansky: The NYPD to be totally honest, just stop responding to my emails about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eric Umansky is an editor at ProPublica.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find his reporting on the NYPD at ProPublica.org.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's worth noting that there has been at least one significant reform to policing in New York since the widespread protests earlier this summer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The state repealed a statute known as 50A that prohibited the release of reports on officer misconduct that previously got in the way of investigating complaints.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As a result of that repeal, something like 320,000 previously sealed complaints against the NYPD were released online today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's 320-something thousand complaints that were filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the CCRB, that were closed after an investigation and now reopened for the world to see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram, this is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
