Earlier this summer, Hell Gate broke the news of some disturbing goings-on at the Civilian Complaint Review Board: Two particular board members have been, in recent months, undermining the CCRB's police oversight by overruling the findings of the board's investigators at extremely high rates, taking cases where investigators have found enough evidence to recommend discipline and instead letting the officers off scot-free.
Those two board members are Joe Fox, who was appointed to the board by the NYPD, and Pat Smith, a Mayor Adams appointee and former New York Post columnist who has been on a crusade to discourage people from filing misconduct complaints against police. While board panels have historically reversed about 10 percent of the cases where investigators found evidence of police misconduct, recent panels, led by Smith and Fox, have been flipping between 40 and 50 percent of the substantiated charges presented to them, effectively making more than 100 instances of alleged police misconduct disappear.
Shortly after our first story about Smith and Fox tossing large numbers of cases where investigators had found misconduct, they did it again. When we asked them about it to their faces at a public CCRB hearing, they refused to defend their actions.
Since our last reporting, CCRB leadership has restricted access to the panel reports, making it more difficult for Hell Gate to track how often board members are reversing investigator's recommendations. But Hell Gate has confirmed that Smith and Fox continue to flip unusually large percentages of the substantiated allegations they review—more than a third of the allegations in a recent panel that took place in June.
The CCRB did not respond to a request for comment. Asked if Mayor Adams believes it's appropriate for his appointees to erase cases of likely police misconduct in this way, his office did not respond.
It can be hard to explain the internal workings of the CCRB, mired as they are in the technical jargon of panels, substantiated allegations, and flip rates. But the bureaucratic language belies the real effect the board's tossing of cases has on the New Yorkers who look to the CCRB for redress when they experience police misconduct. Hell Gate spoke to one such person, whose experience of disturbing police misconduct was validated by investigators but whitewashed by Smith and Fox when they reviewed the case in March.
Andre, who requested that his real name not be used because he fears reprisals from the police, spent Halloween day of 2023 playing basketball with a friend in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx. Then, he told Hell Gate, he went trick-or-treating with a friend and their little brothers. Afterwards, he had his friend drop off their little brothers, and then the two sat in a park for a while. They were heading home when an unmarked police car passed them, did a U-turn, and pulled up just ahead of them. Two cops jumped out and ran toward Andre's friend, stopping him and frisking him. Then yet another officer jumped out of the car.
Andre, who was 20 years old at the time, hadn't seen these particular cops before but he'd had enough experience with aggressive harassment from other officers from the 48th Precinct to be apprehensive. "It's been a repeated pattern in my area," he said, of the aggressive stop-and-frisk activity under the Adams administration. "It's not just been affecting me, a lot of people in my area have been stopped and frisked illegally."
Frightened, Andre began to run. He didn't get far before one of the cops caught up and threw him against a gate. Another officer put him in handcuffs. Checking his pockets, they found a knife, which Andre said his father, a construction worker, had given him as a gift when Andre also began working in the industry. As the cops brought Andre back to the police car and put him inside, he asked his friend to tell his mom that he was being taken to the precinct.
Once there, Andre called his father, who confirmed to police that the knife was a work tool. Police issued Andre a summons for his knife anyway. The summons contained faulty information (it incorrectly listed Andre as undomiciled), and when Andre showed up in court later to fight it, he learned that the police had also failed to file the appropriate paperwork needed to move it forward, so it was dismissed. "I never got to see a judge," he told Hell Gate. "I never got my work knife back. I went through all that, and I didn't even do nothing."
Andre and his parents were upset. After asking around about what recourse they had, they reported the incident to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Based on their report, CCRB investigators identified 11 potential instances of misconduct, and set about looking into them—interviewing Andre, witnesses, and the three officers in the police car that night, and reviewing the officers' body-worn camera footage.
CCRB investigators found evidence to support substantiating nine of the 11 allegations against the officers who stopped and frisked Andre. The legal standards for the police to stop, frisk, and search someone are well established. Police need reasonable suspicion that someone is involved in criminal activity before they can legally stop them. The officers claimed in their reports and CCRB interviews that they saw a rectangular bulge in Andre's pocket that made them think he had a gun. Their body-worn camera footage doesn't show this bulge, however, and they didn't find a gun. In any case, a bulging pocket does not legally qualify as reasonable suspicion.
With all this in mind, investigators determined that the officers had abused their authority when they stopped, frisked, and searched Andre and stopped and searched his friend, as well as when they threw Andre against the gate.
The investigators also discovered something else: That night, two of the officers had failed to activate their body-worn cameras before the stop, which is a violation of the NYPD patrol guide and cause for a misconduct finding by the CCRB. When the CCRB investigators interviewed the officers about it, one of them told the investigators that he didn't think he needed to because he didn't actually speak to Andre, a reason that is not a valid excuse under the NYPD patrol guide. The other officer's excuse, according to the closing report? "It slipped his mind," he told the investigators.
Similarly, one of the officers was accused of failing to provide his business card to Andre's friend, as required under the Right to Know Act. The officer admitted to investigators that he hadn't, telling them he'd had to run off.
When this evidence was presented to Smith, Fox, and a third board member, AU Hogan, when they considered the case on March 31, a majority of the three-member panel agreed that the officer who said that turning on his body camera had slipped his mind had committed misconduct. But they flipped the misconduct recommendation for the cop who said he thought he didn't need to turn on his camera, resolving the allegation instead by saying they were "unable to determine" if the accusation was true. And the officer who didn't provide his business card? Smith and Fox also flipped the investigators' recommendation that the charges be substantiated, to "unable to determine."
Smith and Fox also reversed the six other recommended substantiated charges related to the stop, frisk, and search, voting forward a final determination that the board was "unable to determine" whether misconduct had taken place or not. Out of 9 instances of alleged police misconduct that night for which investigators found evidence, only one would get sent to the NYPD for recommended discipline: the instance of the officer who didn't turn on his body camera because it "slipped his mind." (If the NYPD approved the CCRB's recommendation, that infraction would carry a penalty that ranges from "oral admonishment" to the docking of five vacation days.)
When Andre learned that the police who jumped out on him that night weren't going to suffer any consequences for what he still believes was an improper stop, frisk, and search, he was frustrated.
"I feel like the CCRB is covering police officers' tracks and making sure that they don't get in trouble, or they just receive slaps on the wrist," Andre told Hell Gate. "Honestly, that makes me very angry, because this shouldn't happen. The police should be responsible for what they did, and held accountable."
He added, "It's made me lose belief in the justice system, because, number one, I don't believe in police just coming up and randomly attacking innocent civilians that don't do anything. I don't stand for that. It's disgusting—why do you feel like you need to use your badge and your status as a police officer to intimidate other people?"