Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) interim chair Arva Rice requested a $15 million proposed budget increase at a city council hearing last Wednesday, March 20. The NYPD independent oversight agency needs the funding to keep pace with an uptick in police misconduct allegations.
“A priority for the agency was to reduce investigation timelines, which last year, we were able to bring down by 22%,” said Rice in her testimony. “Yet, in 2023, civilians filed 50% more complaints than in 2022, a 10-year high. So far in 2024, we have received even more complaints, 14% more than the already increased rate of last year. We are on pace to receive 6,300 complaints in 2024 which will inevitably cause timelines to increase again, which is worse for officers and civilians alike.”
The CCRB is asking for a total of $37.7 million. That’s $13 million more than last year’s budget to police the police. Specifically, the agency needs to hire 73 investigators to fulfill the growing workload. Meanwhile, the NYPD’s proposed budget sits at $5.4 billion—with a ‘B.’
According to Rice, the CCRB could not investigate every complaint within its jurisdiction for the first time in agency history in December due to cuts. This year, the agency ceased investigating some allegation types like “refusal to provide name or shield number” and “forcible removal to a hospital” unless they were attached to other allegation types within the CCRB’s jurisdiction. That led to 459 police misconduct complaints getting closed and another 73 referred back to the NYPD due to budget.
To be clear, it is currently unknown whether the increased complaints stem from a significant rise in police misconduct or the CCRB’s recently expanded jurisdiction; over the past few years, investigations over body-worn cameras and racial profiling were added to the docket. But civil lawsuit payments over misconduct are generally going up according to Jennvine Wong, staff attorney of the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid.
“In this particular cycle, Mayor [Eric] Adams [has taken] so many different agency budgets to the chopping block except for NYPD,” added Wong. “For an agency whose budget has grown year over year, it [doesn’t make] a lot of sense that the one independent oversight agency for the NYPD continues to have [its] budget cut and resources limited.”
“The reality also is that while the CCRB is an independent agency, they also have a limited jurisdiction. Most NYPD misconduct is actually investigated by the NYPD themselves either by [Internal Affairs Bureau] or other investigative agencies. And so the vast majority of disciplinary proceedings and investigations and misconduct investigations are actually still secret because the NYPD is not not transparent in the way that CCRB is.”
Beyond hiring investigators, the $15 million could go towards finding a policy director whose research would provide a better understanding on why police misconduct complaints are at a decade high, according to a CCRB spokesperson.
Staffing the CCRB is no easy task. New talent needs to be recruited and trained. Retaining existing investigators is more challenging with the lack of funding for promotions and raises. Stretching the roster means more overtime hours. And burnout is imminent for a role that already requires watching hours of body-worn camera footage featuring graphic, violent incidents. Grants currently fund a single therapist for just seven hours a week, according to the agency.
And speaking of body-worn cameras, the CCRB continues to advocate for direct access to all recorded footage, which is common practice across police oversight agencies, according to Wong. A bill introduced by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams would make it local law. But the NYPD fears evidence could be unsealed illegally if the legislation passed. At the moment, 75% of CCRB investigations are closed with access to body-worn camera footage. Just 26% are closed without that access.
Of course, the CCRB still faces the challenge of enforcing disciplinary actions—even if misconduct is fully investigated and proven, the ball is in the court of the NYPD Commissioner to impose punishment. Wong says it’s certainly demoralizing for police misconduct victims when a recommendation is not backed up by discipline, but she believes the requested budget is critical.
“It doesn’t matter how much you expand their jurisdiction or authorize them with more power, you’re cutting them off at the knees, and you’re undermining their ability and authority to hold the police accountable by not committing necessary resources to an agency like the CCRB,” said Wong.
More than three decades ago, divorcing the CCRB entirely from the NYPD into a fully independent oversight agency led rioting cops and racist attacks to the doorstep of former Mayor David Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor.
In her testimony, Rice reminded local lawmakers of such a history: “Thirty years ago, New York City was at an inflection point,” she said. “The City Council was faced with the decision to reimagine what safety and accountability should look like in this city and determined that the people of New York deserved more. Together that City Council and Mayor Dinkins created the CCRB. Today, this city is facing another inflection point. There is a fork in the road.
“One path leads us down the same trajectory we have followed for 30 years, incremental changes that still leave us with a chronic issue of misconduct and lack of accountability. The other path would allow this city to realize the vision that this council and Mayor Dinkins had 30 years ago when they went out on a limb to create this agency.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.