New Records Show the NYPD’s Favored Punishment: Less Vacation Time
After the repeal of a state law shielding New York police officers’ disciplinary histories from disclosure, the New York Police Department in March released several years’ worth of disciplinary records for its officers. However, the agency published the records in a way that made it difficult to see which officers had been disciplined and how.
To understand how the NYPD has been holding its own accountable, ProPublica downloaded profile information for all of the agency’s 34,000 officers and pulled out disciplinary information for the more than 1,300 officers for whom that information was listed. The department limited disclosure to cases where officers were judged guilty or pleaded no contest in its trial process — some of the most severe cases.
What those records show is that the most common form of punishment was docking vacation time. In some 89% of the cases made public, reduced vacation time was one of the penalties levied, and in more than 60% of the cases it was the only punishment. Officers in the database can have multiple cases filed against them.
