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The NYPD is a notoriously corrupt institution, whose indiscriminate acts of violence and murder have steadily worsened for decades. A powerful police union and a cowed City Hall ensure that even the worst cops rarely have any kind of reckoning.
After a series of legal wrangles - a New York state law, a lawsuit by the police union, and Propublica's brave decision to publish - we finally got a glimpse at the buried horrors in the NYPD disciplinary files.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/#nypd-who
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We also learned about the impunity enjoyed by dirty cops, including the cops who were caught on camera breaking the law to brutalize and maim protesters in last summer's BLM uprising.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/18/news-worthy/#nypd-black-and-blue
However, there are instances of police abuse that are so egregious and well-documented that the officers involved face some kind of consequences.
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For example, Officer Vincent D'Andraia faces criminal charges and a civil suit after he was recorded brutalizing Dounya Zayer last summer.
https://twitter.com/JasonLemon/status/1266529475757510656
NYC's Law Department has announced that it won't provide D'Andraia with a lawyer. That may sound like he's being cut loose, but as a joint The City/Propublica article by Jake Pearson explains, that isn't true.
https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/3/26/22351475/nypd-union-contract-defend-officers-when-the-city-wont
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That's because the city's contract with the NYPD's union mandates the funding of a secretive slush-fund that is used to hire white-shoe, high-powered private sector lawyers to defend cops so dirty the City's own lawyers won't touch them.
The deal has been in place since 1985, and it requires the city to divert $75 per officer ($2m/year) into a defense fund that cops get to dip into "when the City of New York fails or otherwise refuses to provide a legal defense."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20509353-pba_civil_legal_representation_fund_8112_73117
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Nominally, this fund is off limits in case "directly or indirectly adverse to the interests of the City," but this is meaningless: when someone sues over police brutality, the City is usually a co-defendant, meaning defending the dirty cop is in the City's interest.
The City's contract with the Police Benevolent Association - the NYPD's union - expired in 2017 and will likely be renegotiated by whomever wins the upcoming NYC mayoral race.
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As Pearson notes, the $75/officer fund has become standard - Rikers' guards and police brass all got similar deals after the PBA deal was struck.
These deals mean that even when cops and guards commit offenses so grotesque the City won't defend them, NYC's taxpayers do.
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Police reform is on the ticket in the mayoral race. NYC pays out hundreds of millions of dollars every single year to settle claims against its officers, but its contracts with the PBA make those officers not just un-fireable but immune to ANY consequences.
Image: Teresa Shen (modified):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tshen91/8393203038
CC BY:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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