Force: PEPPER SPRAY - The NYPD Files

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This database was last updated in July 2020 and is no longer being updated. Data on this page may be out of date.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

Search for Officer by Name or Badge Number

Look Up a Precinct or Unit

Force: Pepper Spray

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

266

Complaints

297

Allegations

324

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
Craig Mastromatteo	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 31 years old	Exonerated	2003
Dennis Russo	Police Officer	White male	Hispanic male, 33 years old	Exonerated	2003
Darren King	Police Officer	Black male	Black male, 35 years old	Exonerated	2003
John Roberts	Police Officer	White male	Black female, 34 years old	Exonerated	2003
Christophe Devaney	Sergeant	White male	Black female, 40 years old	Exonerated	2003
Joey Rodriguez	Police Officer	Hispanic male	Hispanic male, 18 years old	Exonerated	2002
Justin Dengler	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 15 years old	Exonerated	2002
Terrence Cane	Police Officer	White male	Black female, 58 years old	Exonerated	2002
Eloy Sanchez	Police Officer	Hispanic male	Black male, 44 years old	Substantiated (Charges)	2002
Terrence Cane	Police Officer	White male	Black female, 41 years old	Exonerated	2002
Colin Austin	Police Officer	Black male	Black male, 16 years old	Exonerated	2002
Timothy Heines	Detective	White male	Hispanic male, 28 years old	Exonerated	2002
Finbarr Fleming	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 26 years old	Exonerated	2001
James Williams	Police Officer	White male	Hispanic male, 25 years old	Exonerated	2001
Cedric Green	Police Officer	Black male	Black male, 51 years old	Exonerated	2001
Kenneth Oconnor	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 17 years old	Exonerated	2001
Eric Delman	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 18 years old	Exonerated	2001
Michael Ernst	Police Officer	White male	Black male, 25 years old	Exonerated	2000
Pedro Ramos	Police Officer	Hispanic male	Hispanic male, 43 years old	Unsubstantiated	2000
Christophe Lawrence	Sergeant	White male	Black male, 34 years old	Exonerated	1999
Fitzroy Vigilance	Police Officer	Black male	Not available	Exonerated	1999
Timothy Mccormack	Sergeant	White male	Black male, 34 years old	Exonerated	1999
Pete Massa	Police Officer	White male	Black female	Exonerated	1999
Ramon Munoz	Detective	Hispanic male	Black male, 19 years old	Exonerated	1999

‹ Previous 1 2 3 4 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.