Vote for the CCRB in 2025

Cast your ballot for New York City mayor in 2025 and vote for the CCRB you want to see.

What is the CCRB?

The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) is a city agency that reviews complaints about police misconduct and makes recommendations about whether officers should be disciplined if they are found to have acted improperly. The CCRB was created in 1993 in response to decades of allegations of NYPD misconduct. When Mayor Dinkins proposed a civilian agency to handle these allegations, ten thousand police rioted. They blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, attacked journalists, and chanted racist slogans about Dinkins. The agency survived these challenges.

Today, the CCRB has around 150 employees, most of whom are civilian investigators who follow up on allegations against the police. They interview the complainant, the officer(s) in question, and any witnesses. The investigator then transmits their findings to a panel of three board members. The panel decides whether to substantiate the findings of completed investigations. If a majority of the panel votes to substantiate the findings, they forward the case to the police commissioner, who is empowered to impose discipline.

Photo: Keith Myers, New York Times

What is a civilian complaint?

A complaint is a formal statement made to an investigator at the CCRB. Any person, regardless of their citizenship status or whether they're a resident of New York, can file a complaint. The four primary allegations against NYPD officers are excessive force, abuse of authority, discourtesy, and offensive language. If you believe you have been a victim of police misconduct, you can file a complaint here.

Who is part of the board?

The board is designed to consist of 15 members. Five seats are appointed by the Mayor, five by the NYC City Council, three by the Police Commissioner, one by the Public Advocate, and the Chair is jointly appointed by the Mayor and City Council. No member of the board is allowed to have a background in law enforcement, other than those designated by the police commissioner, and none may be public employees or serve in public office. For more information about the board members, visit the CCRB's website.

Under the Adams administration, the board has been reduced by over 25% due to vacancies. Since cases can only be heard by three-member panels (with one mayoral, one city council, and one police commissioner designee each), the absence of two mayoral appointees has a great effect on how many panels can be formed.

Over a thousand cases are ruled on by sub-panels of the board every month, and in this diminished state less time can be given to every case.

Mayor Adams is currently leaving two of his own appointed seats empty in addition to the chair position.

The previous chair of the CCRB, Arva Rice, resigned in July 2024 and the position remains unfilled as of December. According to the New York Times, she was pressured to resign by Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety, after she criticized police officials for delaying an investigation into the fatal shooting of a Bronx man by police.

Year-by-Year CCRB Complaints

The CCRB under Bloomberg saw a steady increase in the number of complaints over the first several years, and the rate of substantiation dropped. This period of increased CCRB activity lines up with the era of Stop and Frisk, which was later found unconstitutional in 2013.

The de Blasio years are notably quieter. The yearly complaints dip, though the rate of substantiation slightly rises. Notably, Eric Garner was killed by a police officer in 2014.

The rate of substantiation has been significantly higher during Adams' term as mayor, and New Yorkers are filing complaints at levels approaching the peaks of Bloomberg's administration. It's difficult to speculate about cause, but Adams did take office in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in 2020, when law enforcement across the country was under increased scrutiny.

Substantiation Rate by Mayor

Bloomberg Era

There is a pronounced dip in substantiation rate in the middle of Bloomberg's tenure coinciding with a spike in complaints during the peak of the Stop and Frisk policy.

De Blasio Era

The rate of substantiation during de Blasio was on average higher than Bloomberg's. He did not end Stop and Frisk entirely, but the number of stops were an order of magnitude smaller. There's a significant uptick in substantiation rates in mid-2020; George Floyd was killed by the police in May of that year, and there were widespread protests over the course of the summer.

Adams Era

Ever since 2021, the CCRB's substantiation rate has often exceeded 10%, which was unprecedented going back to the beginning of Bloomberg's term. Adams' CCRB has consistently substantiated cases at a higher rate than his predecessors'.

Impact of Body Worn Cameras

In response to Floyd v. City of New York, the federal court ruling that ended Stop and Frisk, the NYPD was mandated to equip their officers with body worn cameras (BWC). The program began in April 2017 with 1,300 officers, and was fully implemented in December 2017. Let's examine whether the presence of video evidence influences substantiations of complaints.

When body camera footage is available, complaints are more likely to be substantiated. The availability of video evidence has been a significant factor in the increase in substantiation rates.

Substantiation Outcomes by Administration

Several types of consequences can result from the CCRB substantiating a complaint. The lightest is formalized training or instructions, which requires an officer to receive additional training at the Police Academy or be instructed by a superior to better understand NYPD regulations. Command Discipline A and B typically mean that the officer who's been found to have acted improperly loses vacation days; Command Discipline B is the more serious of the two. The most severe outcome is the filing of charges. The officer is brought before a departmental trial, and if convicted might end up suspended or dismissed. Let's look at the outcomes of CCRB rulings under the last three mayors.

The data is admittedly a little messy: in the Bloomberg era and the beginning of de Blasio's term, there were not separate categories for Command Discipline A and B, so it's difficult to know how severe those outcomes were; for the sake of legibility, the different types of Command Discipline have been combined here. As Command Discipline has increased, the subset of complaints that result in charges has shrunk. Although the CCRB might substantiate a greater proportion of complaints under Eric Adams, the outcomes are generally less severe for the officers when they are found to have committed an offense.

Complaints and Substantiation by Type

Not every civilian complaint concerns the use of physical force. The CCRB has four main categories for the complaints they receive: Force, Abuse of Authority, Discourtesy, and Offensive Language (FADO). How does the CCRB handle these different types of complaints?

No matter who the mayor is, the most common complaints concern abuse of authority; such complaints are also among the most likely to be substantiated. An example of abuse of authority includes Fourth Amendment violations such as illegal searches, or unlawful frisks and detentions. Another example unrelated to the Fourth Amendment would be an officer's refusal to provide a name and shield number.

Across the board, the least likely type of complaint to be substantiated concerns the use of force. This pattern remains consistent across different administrations, despite changes in leadership and policy.

Offensive language and discourtesy were three or four times more likely to be substantiated by the CCRB under Adams. Considering these are violations that do not typically infringe on citizens' rights or inflict physical harm, it follows that the punishments administered to officers have been declining in severity.

Demographics of CCRB Complainants

Let's take a look at whether race and sex play any part in how the CCRB makes decisions, and if any differences emerge when comparing the last three mayors' terms.

During Bloomberg and de Blasio's tenures, Black men were the most likely demographic to have their complaint substantiated by the CCRB. They were also the most likely to file a complaint. Asian men and women have a markedly higher rate of substantiation during the Adams era, though they file significantly fewer complaints.

Looking at this data, the constant over all three mayoralties is the lower rate of substantiation of women's complaints about police misconduct.

Why should you care about the CCRB?

The CCRB has its share of critics. The agency has long been regarded with suspicion and contempt by the police, but it also has critics on the left, who argue that the CCRB exists to give the illusion of oversight without the ability to impose real disciplinary consequences.

No matter what position you take, the agency exists and will continue functioning until it is formally abolished. As New Yorkers, we live with the NYPD and we should have some say in how its officers uphold the law. Our votes for mayor will indirectly shape the composition of the board. If you want a more lenient board, you should vote for a candidate who is skeptical of police oversight; if you want a more punitive board, you should vote for a candidate who is in favor of reining in the NYPD.

When can you vote for the CCRB you want to see?

The election for mayor of New York City will be held on November 4, 2025. However, the primary elections will be held in June, and if recent years are any indication this is likely when New Yorkers will be choosing their next mayor.

Who are the candidates running in the Democratic primary?

Eric Adams

Current Mayor of New York City

Brad Lander

NYC Comptroller

Zohran Mamdani

NY State Assemblymember

Zellnor Myrie

NY State Senator

Jessica Ramos

NY State Senator

Scott Stringer

Former NYC Comptroller

What can you do in the meantime?

If you want to learn more about the activities of the CCRB, the board holds public meetings where they update the public, take questions, and hear concerns related to police misconduct. The meetings are open to the public and anyone can ask a question. These meetings typically take place on the second Wednesday of each month at 4:00 PM, and every year they hold at least one meeting in each borough.

Other ways to shape police oversight

Elections aren't the only way to make the CCRB change course. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed by a police officer who used a chokehold to subdue him for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, a misdemeanor. After widespread protests and pressure, the NYPD adopted several reforms, including the use of body worn cameras, and the officer who killed Garner was eventually fired. We can also see a shift in the CCRB's handling of similar cases:

Chokeholds after Eric Garner

The CCRB is roughly five times more likely to substantiate a case involving a chokehold now than they were before the killing of Eric Garner. This is the result of public pressure and the increased scrutiny of police misconduct brought about by New Yorkers across the city who joined together to demand change. So there's no need to wait until an election, or even for the next public meeting of the CCRB. New Yorkers can influence the way this agency does its work by simply joining together and demanding better police oversight.

About this data

All of the above has been drawn from data made available to the public by the CCRB's Data Transparency Initiative. They conduct their own analyses of the same data, and you should feel free to look for yourself. Besides the important work the CCRB does in handling and investigating these complaints, their compiling and releasing this information sheds light on something that was invisible before. Without this resource, we would only encounter Fourth Amendment violations in the context of a court case: a police officer conducted a search unlawfully and they find a gun or something illegal, and it might get suppressed or dismissed because they didn't follow the law. But only seeing this outcome, when the case has reached the courts, fosters a distorted cost/benefit analysis of these police practices. You might be tempted to think, "Well, the search was illegal but they did get a gun off the streets." However, as the data shows, in reality these searches happen far more often than the system or the public can ever understand, but they're just never reported unless someone files a complaint to the CCRB which results in a substantiated abuse of authority allegation. So we owe a debt of gratitude to the CCRB for not only their everyday work, but also the recording and publication of their efforts.