Nothing is more important to public safety than confidence in law enforcement. Nothing ensures that confidence more than holding law enforcement accountable, and nothing guarantees accountability more than robust civilian oversight. But civilian oversight doesn’t happen by accident — it takes sustained commitment.
New York City should be proud that we have developed unparalleled public accountability for our municipal police department through our Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the city agency created in 1993 to investigate complaints of police mistreatment.
In 2023 alone, the CCRB investigated more than 5,600 reports. The review board’s significant work is not, however, an excuse to grow complacent. As the CCRB’s former chair, I call on the city’s leadership to keep the CCRB robust and to expand its authority and jurisdiction.
While oversight of policing is sometimes portrayed as politically divisive, its core purpose should be something to which every New Yorker can agree. We all want to feel safe in our city. We all want police officers to obey the law and treat every New Yorker with equality and respect. And, when officer misconduct happens, we should all want to see fair and appropriate discipline.
Transparency benefits everyone — all the officers who perform their jobs faithfully, and all the people they protect and serve. Strengthening the CCRB is an essential part of restoring public faith in policing, and we are at a pivotal moment.
In April, Mayor Adams asked then-CCRB interim Chair Arva Rice to resign after she criticized the NYPD for withholding body camera footage from the fatal shooting of Kawaski Trawick. These complaints were not unjustified: It took the NYPD more than 18 months to release the video. That is unacceptable, and Rice was fulfilling her duties to name that. Attempts to force the resignation of a CCRB chair raises serious questions about the review board’s independence and future.
Now, the mayor and City Council Speaker Adriene Adams are poised to appoint a new chair of the CCRB, a decision with profound ramifications. After this appointment, city leadership must respect the independence of the agency.
It is the responsibility of the CCRB chair to call out missteps by NYPD personnel, and to engage with the community around issues of police accountability. Disagreements between CCRB and the mayor’s office, City Council and NYPD are bound to happen. But these disagreements should never be used to demand resignations of CCRB leadership nor to defund its work.
In addition to appointing a new chair and respecting that person’s authority, there are several steps the city can take to enhance public confidence in civilian oversight, and thus respect for NYPD service members. First, the mayor and the speaker must limit the authority of the police commissioner to arbitrarily intervene in cases the CCRB is adjudicating.
When the CCRB was established almost 30 years ago, one compromise in its authorizing legislation was to give the police commissioner authority to remove any case from the CCRB process for the “good of the department.” As Errol Louis recently documented in an opinion piece, that authority is being abused. This must be stopped, and the City Council is currently considering legislation to do just that. The sooner it is passed, the better it will be for both the people of NYC and all the NYPD officers whose reputation is tainted when acts of misconduct are covered up or dismissed with a mere slap on the wrist.
Further to this point, the CCRB must have final authority in cases it adjudicates. Currently, the CCRB processes cases and makes recommendations to the police commissioner for discipline. The police commissioner can either accept, reject or modify the CCRB recommendations. This must end. CCRB discipline recommendations must become final.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and I negotiated and implemented a disciplinary matrix to ensure consistent discipline across the department and in CCRB recommendations. This agreement should now be codified into law. Until it is, CCRB recommendations are not binding. We simply cannot allow arbitrary, capricious and political decisions by any police commissioner or their surrogates to supersede the CCRB’s authority.
As a new chair of the CCRB is considered, the mayor and speaker must ensure the agency’s oversight is respected, maintained, and enhanced. And they must ensure the new chair is allowed to lead, not become a pawn or mouthpiece for elected officials — or anyone else.
Davie was chair of the CCRB from December 2017 until January 2022. He is senior strategic advisor at Union Theological Seminary, where he served as executive vice president for 10 years.
