Last week, the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) found more than 100 New York City cops guilty of misconduct during violent clashes with Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters in 2020. The CCRB recommended a range of penalties for the officers, from loss of vacation days to charges. No charges have ever been brought against most of the rioters who injured nearly 400 NYPD officers in those same riots.
Following the death of George Floyd while he was in the custody of Minneapolis police in May 2020, BLM and Antifa instigated the Summer of Terror. Riots, fires, looting, and other violence swept through more than 200 American cities. When the violence surfaced in New York City, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the NYPD to handle it.
NYPD came out in force to confront the lawless violence that threatened property and human life. More than a few interactions between police and rioters turned violent as NYPD officers attempted to gain control of the situation — after all, BLM and Antifa are not known for applying restraint or being easily reasoned with. When the only tool in your toolbox is a baseball bat, every problem is a head that needs smashing.
In response to complaints — mostly from the very criminals who perpetrated the violence of 2020 — the CCRB took on the task of investigating the actions of NYPD officers who were caught between the rock of their duty and the hard place of violent rioting at the hands of BLM and Antifa.
During the BLM/Antifa violence, more than 400 NYPD officers were injured. And while very few have ever been charged for the crime of injuring those officers (though many of those crimes were captured on video), the CCRB has completed its investigation and issued its report.
The CCRB investigations looked into roughly “750 complaints lodged by protesters against police for misuse of force, abuse of authority, discourtesy, and making false statements,” according to a report by the Daily Mail. The board singled out more than 300 complaints and “verified 65 complaints that included 187 allegations against 104 officers,” according to a report by a report by The Independent. The CCRB recommended that charges, the highest level of punishment, be filed against 61 of the officers, meaning they could face a departmental trial. The board further suggested that 18 officers receive Command Discipline B, and that 25 officers receive Command Discipline A.
“Command Disciplines are recommended for misconduct that is more problematic than poor training but does not rise to the level of charges. An officer can lose up to 10 vacation days as a result of a Command Discipline,” the CCRB website states.
The CCRB claims that fully one-third of the complaints could not be fully investigated because the officers involved could not be identified. This, the CCRB report claims, is because officers failed to follow proper protocol and because they hid their identities by covering their badge numbers. The report states:
The CCRB has seen unprecedented challenges in investigating these complaints, particularly around the identification of officers due to the failure to follow proper protocols, officers covering their names and shield, officers wearing protective equipment that did not belong to them, the lack of proper use of body-worn cameras, as well as incomplete and severely delayed paperwork.
Civilian review boards are almost always made up of leaders in the anti-police crowd, and the CCRB in New York City is no different. Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), told New York’s PIX11:
Despite CCRB’s attempts to substantiate cases on the flimsiest of evidence, the vast majority of complaints they investigate don’t result in a finding of misconduct. Meanwhile, almost none of the violent agitators who injured nearly 400 police officers during the protests have been identified or held accountable.
And Paul DiGiacomo, head of the Detectives Endowment Association, said the officers were simply following de Blasio’s orders to handle the violence of BLM rioters. He told the Daily Mail, “The police department only does what they’re ordered to do by the Mayor of the City of New York,” adding that there was clearly a bias on the part of the CCRB.
The NYPD said in a statement that it will move forward with departmental trials for the cases the CCRB recommend for charges:
Police officers are entitled to due process and may choose to go forward with an administrative trial where evidence must be presented and may be challenged. These trials are open to the public. Any discipline that results in a finding of guilt or a plea of guilty in an NYPD administrative trial will be made public in the NYPD’s online discipline database and the penalty imposed will be based on a disciplinary matrix that was developed by the Department with significant input from the CCRB, other oversight entities, and the public.
So, as per CCRB recommendations, those officers who risked life and limb to protect the citizens of their city from orchestrated terrorist attacks by armed and dangerous mobs of BLM and Antifa thugs will face departmental charges. It is hoped that those trials will be impartial and that the officers will enjoy a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The statement from the NYPD claims that will be the case:
It has been mutually agreed by both NYPD and the CCRB that this matrix will serve as a framework for police officer discipline. The NYPD has made significant strides and continues to work toward making our discipline processes transparent. Like any citizen, police officers should be afforded a presumption of innocence until and unless proven guilty.
The CCRB is taking this as a victory lap, stating that New Yorkers have had to wait a long time for resolution to these complaints. The board said it hopes this helps heal the rift between police and the people they serve. It remains to be seen how branding more than 100 NYPD officers as “guilty” will help heal anything — especially when those officers are “guilty” of being thrown into a street brawl with angry members of the snowflake army.
Of course, it may well turn out that a series of fair and impartial trials will find many of them not guilty. If that happens, BLM and Antifa may resort to the very tactics that started all of this in the first place. If so, God help New York City and the rest of America.
