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This database was last updated in July 2020 and is no longer being updated. Data on this page may be out of date.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After New York state repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret, ProPublica sought records from the civilian board that investigates complaints by the public about New York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 →
An officer used excessive or otherwise unnecessary force.
Allegation Type | Total |
---|---|
Physical Force | 4,849 |
Gun Pointed | 628 |
Pepper Spray | 324 |
Nightstick As Club (Incl Asp & Baton) | 260 |
Chokehold | 244 |
Push/Shove | 178 |
Hit Against Inanimate Object | 176 |
Other Force | 134 |
Other | 124 |
Punch/Kick | 114 |
Nonlethal Restraining Device | 87 |
Handcuffs Too Tight | 76 |
Dragged/Pulled | 63 |
Beat | 57 |
Other Blunt Instrument As A Club | 49 |
Gun As Club | 40 |
Gun Fired | 40 |
Vehicle | 35 |
Radio As Club | 35 |
Flashlight As Club | 28 |
Nightstick/Billy/Club | 25 |
Restricted Breathing | 21 |
Mace | 20 |
Slap | 14 |
Police Shield | 11 |
Animal | 3 |
An officer used police powers to take unwarranted actions, such as an unlawful search.
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 |
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 |
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.