Search Thousands of Civilian Complaints Against New York City Police Officers

This database was last updated in July 2020 and is no longer being updated. Data on this page may be out of date.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.

Abuse of Authority: Refusal To Show Search Warrant

This page contains all allegations assigned to this category by the CCRB. Multiple similar allegations can appear for the same officer because a complaint received from a civilian can include multiple allegations.

Officers With Complaints
98
Complaints
106
Allegations
125

What the CCRB’s Conclusions Mean

Substantiated: The alleged conduct occurred and it violated the rules. (Here is a breakdown of the types of discipline the CCRB can recommend. The NYPD can choose to ignore those recommendations. It has discretion over what, if any, discipline is imposed.)

Exonerated: The alleged conduct occurred but did not violate the NYPD’s rules, which often give officers significant discretion over use of force.

Unsubstantiated: The CCRB has fully investigated but could not affirmatively conclude both that the conduct occurred and that it broke the rules.

Officer Rank at Time of Complaint Officer Details Complainant Details CCRB Conclusion Year Received
Robert Clark Sergeant White male Black male, 55 years old Unsubstantiated 2011
Philip Rivera Captain Hispanic male Not available Substantiated (Charges) 2011
Dennis Friendly Detective Black male Black female, 23 years old Unsubstantiated 2011
Jennifer Lavelle Detective White female Hispanic female, 43 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Gennaro Russo Detective White male Black male, 57 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Paul Prendergast Sergeant White male Black female, 30 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Thomas Dunsing Detective White male Other Race male, 49 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Peter Valentin Detective Hispanic male Black male, 36 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Lorenzo Johnson Captain White male Hispanic male, 23 years old Unsubstantiated 2010
Brian Fleming Detective White male Black female, 24 years old Unsubstantiated 2009
Dino Tamayo Sergeant Hispanic male Black female, 47 years old Unsubstantiated 2009
Anthony Borelli Sergeant White male Unknown male, 22 years old Unsubstantiated 2009
Kevin Matthews Sergeant White male Black female Unsubstantiated 2008
Michael White Sergeant Black male Black female, 42 years old Unsubstantiated 2008
Barbara Arroyo Police Officer White female Black female, 20 years old Unsubstantiated 2007
Dion Edwards Police Officer Black male Black male, 18 years old Unsubstantiated 2007
Lorenzo Johnson Captain White male Not available Unsubstantiated 2007
William Buchanan Sergeant White male Black male, 43 years old Unsubstantiated 2007
Daniel Sbarra Sergeant White male Black female, 66 years old Unsubstantiated 2007
Barbara Arroyo Police Officer White female Hispanic female, 23 years old Unsubstantiated 2006
Maricela Galindez Police Officer Hispanic female Hispanic female, 26 years old Unsubstantiated 2006
Welington Feliz Lieutenant Hispanic male Black female Unsubstantiated 2006
Anthony Salato Police Officer White male Black male, 39 years old Unsubstantiated 2006
Paul Mcmahon Lieutenant White male Black male, 25 years old Unsubstantiated 2005
David Nisthaus Sergeant Hispanic male Black male, 44 years old Unsubstantiated 2004
2 Next ›
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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