Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a chance to show who has the final say on oversight of the New York City Police Department: the civilian watchdog that investigates cases of alleged misconduct, or the police commissioner who can simply overrule all disciplinary recommendations.
Mamdani must break with the past, send a message about his authority over the NYPD and restore credibility to the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the department’s chief independent watchdog.
Let me be clear. I support law enforcement and protecting our communities. The overwhelming majority of police officers treat members of the public with respect and believe in the rule of law. That said, good policing does not give the NYPD free rein to put a boot on the neck of people of color. Crime fighting should not come at the expense of New Yorkers’ civil rights. The mayor’s stance on the CCRB – he backed away from public musings about giving the board the final say on NYPD disciplinary decisions – deserves close scrutiny. He promised to end the NYPD’s tradition of abusive tactics that focus on Black and brown New Yorkers.
The department’s past transgressions magnify the significance of Mamdani’s slow walk or full-out turnaround from his campaign promise to make dramatic changes at NYPD. His pledge included doing away with a controversial gang database and removing police from explosive mental health emergencies.
The CCRB is essential to good law enforcement in light of the NYPD’s long, well-documented tradition of racialized policing, targeting Black and Latinx people for aggressive policing, excessive force and unconstitutional stop and frisk. Every mayor since the late 1980s – Edward Koch, David Dinkins, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams – all tolerated or gave wink-and-nod approval to the ugly and aggressive tactics. None of them used their bully pulpit to do the right thing.
We’re not talking ancient history. The CCRB has been defanged in the face of recent – and ongoing – systematic misconduct. In September 2024, a court-ordered, 500-page disciplinary review concluded city police officers who engage in unconstitutional stops and frisks “rarely, if ever” face discipline, even when the CCRB substantiated misconduct.
Independent civilian review plays an important role in civic discourse. For some tragic reason, elected city and state officials as well as community activists no longer speak out publicly against police excesses. For instance, there has been little public outcry in the wake of an explosive lawsuit filed this year that alleged the NYPD searched Black drivers’ cars 10 times more often than white drivers’.
In fact, Black and Latinx drivers made up over 84 percent of reported vehicle searches between 2022 and last year, the lawsuit said. Drivers of color were in the NYPD crosshairs without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing, said the suit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, NAACP State Conference and Bronx Defenders.
In recent years, police have criminalized poverty, placing a priority on predominantly Black and Latinx homeless and fare beaters, whose encounters with law enforcement tend to be tied to high inflation, income inequality and the cost of public transportation. Even so, One Police Plaza and City Hall downplay the consequences as the number of summonses and arrests skyrocket.
Former Mayor Eric Adams forced out two successive CCRB interim chairs after their vocal support for greater independence put them on the NYPD’s radar. Two of Adams’ police commissioners short-circuited several CCRB investigations and tinkered with the NYPD discipline matrix in ways that lowered penalties for all police officers found to have committed serious offenses. Mamdani would do well to undo the corrupt changes thereby boosting confidence in the CCRB’s independence.
Mayor Mamdani’s backpedaling from his NYPD-related campaign promises began six months ago, at his very first joint news conference with Police Commissioner Jessica Tish. The new mayor stood silent as she defended the gang database he denounced during his campaign. More recently, the Mayor has voiced support for making tweaks and retaining the database. He also publicly apologized for his 2020 comments calling the NYPD “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.”
Mamdani’s reversal on CCRB independence illustrates him coming face to face with a truism that confronts every elected official and will figure in determining what type of mayor he becomes: Life often forces us to choose between doing the right thing vs. doing the expedient thing for the right reasons. The demands of the office can corrupt with damaging effects, tempting leaders to cynically cast away their loyalties, promises and principles.
Our previous mayor fell far short in his pledge to rein in abusive behavior by police officers and hold the NYPD accountable. Mayor Mamdani has an opportunity to send a different message to the city’s Black and brown communities, rank and file officers and the police unions: that police misconduct in any form will not be tolerated. And it starts with demanding a strong CCRB.
David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.
