The NYPD Files
Search Thousands of Civilian Complaints Against New York City Police Officers

by Derek Willis, Eric Umansky and Moiz Syed, July 26, 2020.

This database was last updated in July 2020 and is no longer being updated. Data on this page may be out of date. For more recent information, visit the city's database of civilian complaints against the NYPD.

After New York state repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret, ProPublica sought records from the civilian board that investigates complaints by the public about New York City police officers. The board provided us with the closed cases of every active-duty police officer who had at least one substantiated allegation against them. The records span decades, from September 1985 to January 2020. We have created a database of complaints that can be searched by name or browsed by precinct or nature of the allegations. Read more about this data → | Related: We’re Publishing Thousands of Police Discipline Records That New York Kept Secret for Decades →

3,996
Total officers
12,056
Total complaints in this database
Abuse of Authority 20,292 allegations

An officer used police powers to take unwarranted actions, such as an unlawful search.

Allegation Type Total
Stop 2,300
Search (Of Person) 2,047
Frisk 1,926
Premises Entered And/Or Searched 1,555
Refusal To Provide Name/Shield Number 1,483
Threat Of Arrest 1,409
Vehicle Search 1,405
Vehicle Stop 1,094
Threat Of Force (Verbal Or Physical) 912
Question And/Or Stop 696
Strip Searched 556
Question 527
Other 461
Property Damaged 386
Retaliatory Summons 291
Entry Of Premises 289
Refusal To Obtain Medical Treatment 276
Frisk And/Or Search 241
Refusal To Process Civilian Complaint 185
Gun Drawn 182
Seizure Of Property 178
Failure To Provide Rtka Card 176
Threat To Damage/Seize Property 171
Search Of Premises 159
Retaliatory Arrest 147
Refusal To Show Search Warrant 125
Forcible Removal To Hospital 120
Threat Of Summons 116
Interference With Recording 111
Threat To Notify Acs 97
Refusal To Provide Shield Number 97
Refusal To Provide Name 96
Person Searched 94
Threat Of Force 74
Other Abuse 70
Premise Searched 31
Search Of Recording Device 23
Vehicle Searched 22
Threat Re: Removal To Hospital 21
Detention 19
Photography/Videography 15
Threat To Property 13
Sexual Misconduct (Sexual Humiliation) 13
Sex Miscon (Sexual Harassment, Verbal) 11
Electronic Device Information Deletion 11
Refusal To Show Arrest Warrant 10
Gun Pointed/Gun Drawn 9
Property Seized 8
Arrest/D. A. T. 6
Sh Refuse Cmp 5
Sex Miscon (Sexual/Romantic Proposition) 4
Improper Dissemination Of Medical Info 4
Arrest/Onlooker 4
Gun Pointed 3
Body Cavity Searches 3
Sex Miscon (Sexual Harassment, Gesture) 2
Failed To Obtain Language Interpretation 2
Questioned Immigration Status 1
Discourtesy 4,677 allegations
An officer engaged in rude or profane behavior toward a civilian.
Allegation Type Total
Word 3,942
Action 316
Curse 202
Nasty Words 88
Gesture 51
Demeanor/Tone 38
Other Discourtesy 18
Other 8
Rude Gesture 7
Profane Gesture 3
Gay/Lesbian Slur 3
Sexist Remark 1
Offensive Language 753 allegations
An officer used one or more slurs relating to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
Allegation Type Total
Race 307
Gender 115
Ethnicity 84
Sexual Orientation 78
Black 56
Other 48
Physical Disability 15
Religion 14
Other Ethnic Slur 11
Hispanic 9
White 8
Gender Identity 4
Jewish 2
Oriental 1
Other Asian 1
Additional design and development by Lena Groeger and Lylla Younes.
About This Data
For decades, disciplinary records of police officers in New York have been shielded from public view. After the state recently repealed the law that had kept the records secret, ProPublica requested and received a database from New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates allegations of misconduct against NYPD officers. The database lists the name of each officer, the race of the complainant and the officer, a category describing the alleged misconduct, and whether the CCRB concluded the officers’ conduct violated NYPD rules. Police unions have opposed New York City’s plan to make public data about disciplinary investigations.

This database names about 4,000 of the NYPD’s 36,000 active-duty officers. Every officer in the database has had at least one substantiated allegation. We excluded any allegations that CCRB investigators concluded did not occur and were deemed unfounded. We also removed a small number of officers (62) against whom the CCRB had substantiated allegations, but whose substantiated allegations had not gone fully through the NYPD’s administrative prosecution process. The CCRB was not able to reach conclusions in many cases, in part because the investigators must rely on the NYPD to hand over crucial evidence, such as footage from body-worn cameras. Often, the department is not forthcoming despite a legal duty to cooperate in CCRB investigations. The CCRB gets thousands of complaints per year but substantiates a tiny fraction of them. Allegations of criminal conduct by officers are typically investigated not by the CCRB but by state or federal prosecutors in conjunction with the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau or the FBI. The NYPD’s own findings in cases in this database are not included here.

Read more about what we’ve included in the database and why, and see our answers to questions we have received about this data. If you have information about any of these officers or cases, please fill out our form.

All of the records in this data are from closed cases. But if you see an error, contact the CCRB. If the agency updates its records and lets us know, we'll do so as well.

The data used in this database is downloadable from ProPublica’s Data Store.

Source
This data was obtained through a records request made to the CCRB. It includes fully investigated allegations only for officers who were members of the department as of late June 2020 and against whom the CCRB has substantiated at least one allegation.
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