An NYPD program aimed at identifying problem police officers before they get in serious trouble has singled out too few cops for retraining or other scrutiny, department critics say.
Since it began in August 2020, the NYPD’s Early Intervention Program has investigated service records of 1,132 cops.
Those officers may have been picked out for scrutiny because district attorneys declined to prosecute three of their cases in a year, if they were accused of racial profiling or using a racial slur, or if they drew three or more Civilian Complaint Review Board complaints.
Officers may also end up in the program if evidence they gather in a street or vehicle stop is suppressed, or if a judge formally finds their testimony in court not credible, among other reasons.
Of the cops investigated, 225 — about 20% — were reassigned, retrained, put under closer supervision or required to undergo other scrutiny of their work.
Some 84 of those 225 officers were also investigated by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau. Police would not disclose the outcomes of the IAB probes.
Of the 1,132 officers flagged for the Early Intervention Program, 608 — about 54% — were involved in cases that were not prosecuted.
Police note that non-prosecution decisions often have nothing to do with police officers’ actions. For instance, several years ago, transit fare beaters and other low-level offenders were no longer being prosecuted, even as police were arresting them.
Intervention was ordered for only a handful of the officers who made such arrests, police said.
But all 42 of the officers flagged because judges found their testimony not credible were subject to more work scrutiny or other intervention.
The reassignments and additional supervisory attention to the officers’ work are not meant to be punitive, and aside from the changes to their working conditions the officers picked out for the program suffer no punishment such as loss of vacation days.
But a program that is not punitive…
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