NYPD watchdog group finds body cameras improve quality of police misconduct probes

The advent of NYPD body-worn cameras has greatly improved the quality of investigations into allegations of police misconduct, reducing the number of cases that have to be discarded because of inability to determine facts involved, the Civilian Complaint Review Board said in its latest annual report.

Body cameras became standard issue for most NYPD officers in 2018, and the results since then for the CCRB have led to significant improvements in its investigations, said interim agency director Dr. Mohammad Khalid in a statement accompanying the report.

In the 10 years before the widespread department use of body cameras, the CCRB was unable to identify 21% of officers involved in cases and closed 52% of cases because of problems determining facts, Khalid said.

"In 2024, only 12% of subject officers were unidentified and just 22% of the complaints were closed as ‘unable to determine,'" both record lows, Khalid noted in the report released Monday.

The CCRB handles cases of officers accused of misuse of force, abuse of authority, offensive language and discourtesy. Recently, the CCRB jurisdiction expanded to include biased policing, sexual misconduct and false statements. It also has the ability to open probes on its own initiative.

Substantiated complaints can lead to the CCRB recommending lost vacations days and, in serious cases, to police administrative trials. The police commissioner has final authority on penalties.

But the benefits of body cameras have come at a cost to the understaffed CCRB and has burdened its investigative staff. Khalid noted that in 2024, the agency collected more than 7,500 hours of body camera footage, enough to keep one investigator busy for more than four years.

While body camera videos have helped the CCRB, its continuing staff shortages forced it last year to suspend investigations into certain kinds of cases and ultimately close them without any determinations, the report indicated.

The CCRB had to close 2,872 cases last year because of problems with witnesses, including those who didn’t want to cooperate with investigators, the report noted. That overall number included 1,440 cases which were suspended and ultimately led to closures, according to the CCRB.

The case closings comes at a time when the CCRB, formed in 1993, saw the number of complaints it received rise to 5,663, the highest level in 10 years and up sharply from 3,697 in 2022. CCRB records show the highest level of complaints was 7,660 in 2009.

Last year during City Council budget hearings, CCRB officials said they needed 376 staffers to do the job. But so far this year, the CCRB said it has just 235 staffers. The current starting salary for an investigator is $47,601, according to the agency.

The Police Benevolent Association has in recent years pushed back at the expanded CCRB jurisdiction and PBA President Patrick Hendry, a longtime critic of the monitoring agency, did so again this week.

"When reading this report, New Yorkers should keep in mind what CCRB is not telling them. This report doesn’t specify how many taxpayer dollars CCRB has spent actively soliciting and harvesting complaints against police officers," said Hendry in a statement. "It doesn’t disclose how many cases were generated by CCRB itself, without any civilian complainant."

Hendry maintains the CCRB is "infected with anti-police bias," which the agency has denied in the past.

In a statement, the NYPD said, as it often has, that with millions of interactions a year between the police and the public, CCRB charges amount to an "incredibly small percentage" of those encounters.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.