What hidden NY police misconduct records revealed about spike in officers’ use of force

Police in New York are now using force at higher rates and injuring more people after officers faced limited discipline for use-of-force misconduct that was shrouded in secrecy for generations, records and data show.

The newly reported findings — including that half of nearly 100 use-of-force misconduct cases reviewed for this article were ultimately deemed justified by internal police investigations — recently came to light after a decade-long push for improved police transparency.

At the same time, about 50 other police officers who misused force faced uneven discipline, with nearly 60% of them losing less than a week’s pay or receiving toothless reprimands.

Police use-of-force incidents across New York also leaped nearly 30% from 2017 to 2022, while injuries tied to police force in New York City alone spiked about 70% over four years in a similar span, according to the most recent state and city records and Mapping Police Violence data.

The stakes were crystal clear as police used force a total of more than 83,000 times over that timeframe, leaving scores of New Yorkers injured or dead.

A moment of reckoning for police force

This exclusive analysis of police misconduct and force, in many ways, stemmed from waves of police brutality protests since 2014. During the historic social justice movement, Americans swarmed the streets following the deaths of two Black men, Eric Garner and George Floyd, at the hands of white police officers.

Photo by Seth Harrison | The Journal News

Several thousand protestors marched through Manhattan May 30, 2020 to protest the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis earlier in the week. The march stopped at several points, including in Greenwich Village to rally supporters.

Those protests prodded state lawmakers to pass a measure in 2020 that led to the release of police misconduct records, which USA TODAY Network journalists and Syracuse University students have been analyzing for a series of articles focused on police accountability.

Amid this moment of reckoning, some police agencies are pushing new training aimed at reducing excessive force in law enforcement. That includes an upstate New York sheriff’s office teaching its deputies jujitsu, an ancient weaponless fighting style ideal for de-escalating the potentially dangerous scenarios faced by cops.

“The goal of this is to allow them some other options rather than the old school mentality of hard-hand tactics,” said Deputy Matthew Getman, training coordinator in the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, about the jiu jitsu.

Put differently, he added, “The goal is to use the least amount of force possible.”

What police misconduct records reveal about force

To improve understanding of the use of force by police, a team of Syracuse University student journalists interviewed law enforcement officials and explored hundreds of pages of misconduct records, state reports and independent research.

Among the early findings:

• Out of the more than 100 use-of-force misconduct cases reviewed for this article, 49% of them were deemed justified.
• These officers were cleared of wrongdoing by internal investigations by the police, raising questions about conflicts of interest when police investigate their own.
• Of these 50 cases that were cleared, less than 1% of officers were recommended for further counseling, suggesting there was limited remedial training or on-the-job education around the issue.
• Suspensions without pay for officers found to have misused force ranged from two days up to 150 days, with some departments using policies that lacked clear definitions for determining penalties. Put simply, police discipline for force was highly subjective.

The reporting continues today as additional police departments in New York respond to public-records requests.

Because these records had previously been unobtainable, however, current efforts aimed at improving training, policies and laws intended to curb excessive force lacked crucial details. 

New York’s decade-long fight over deadly police force

Still, the now-blossoming seeds of police transparency in New York were planted in 2014 after Eric Garner, a 43-year-old Black man, died shortly after being placed in a chokehold by a white New York City Police Department officer.

Photo by Getty Images

A man symbolically chokes himself with a scarf during a protest in Grand Central Terminal December 3, 2014 in New York. Protests began after a Grand Jury decided to not indict officer Daniel Pantaleo. Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by Pantaleo on July 17, 2014.

Protestors took to the streets across the country, blocking traffic and staging die-ins while demanding justice for Garner and police reforms.

Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor at the time, vowed police would get new training to “use less force whenever possible,” while legal fights over Garner’s case ignited more protests that led state lawmakers to pass a measure requiring police to report cases of officers using force.

Each police department, sheriff’s office, and the state police must report use of force incidents to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, or DCJS, under that state law that took effect in 2019.

The law also requires the state agency to publish a report explaining the circumstances of each incident, which improved oversight of use of force by law enforcement officers statewide, a DCJS official said in a recent interview.

But most details about police agencies’ internal investigations of the use of force incidents — as well as discipline faced by officers — remained inaccessible to the public despite the state reporting requirements.

That crucial transparency gap, however, began to close in 2020 after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Derick Chauvin, a white Minnesota police officer who kneeled on Floyd’s neck during a traffic stop.

Floyd’s death reignited national protests that led state lawmakers in New York to repeal Section 50-a of the state’s Civil Rights Law that effectively hid police misconduct from the public. The change allowed USA TODAY Network to obtain the use of force records cited in this report.

Photo by Getty Images

Assembly members sit inside the New York State Capitol building in Albany, New York, U.S., on Wednesday, March 19, 2014.

What New York is doing about police force

Taken together, the state reporting and misconduct records offered the first-ever glimpse into systemic flaws contributing to the rise in police use of force.

Among the state findings from an inaugural report released in July 2021: 

• 48% of use-of-force cases relate to impact weapon/electronic control weapon (including Tasers). And 36% of cases involved firearms.
• More than half (53%) of subjects ranged in age from 20 to 34, while most of the total subjects were male (86%); either Black (49%) or White (46%); and non-Hispanic (80%).
• More than half (53%) of officers involved in cases ranged in age from 25 to 34, suggesting factors contributing to the use of force were linked to cops being younger and less experienced.
• Males (91%) were often reported as the officer involved, with most of them being white (76%) and non-Hispanic (81%).

Concerns about racial disparities in use-of-force incidents and mounting excessive force complaints have also sparked new debates in Albany over state law, Article 35, that outlines situations where police use of physical force may be justified.

Under the law, police can use force to defend themselves or others who are in imminent danger of harm, or to stop a suspected crime. Legal battles over police force cases, however, have repeatedly reinforced that police have broad immunity from criminal and civil penalties when using force on the job.

The Daniel’s Law Task Force in December also released its recommendations for a new statewide model for mental health crisis response to mobilize appropriate health providers, rather than law enforcement, as first responders.

The task force, led by state Office of Mental Health Commissioner Ann Sullivan, was established in response to the killing of Daniel Prude, who died in March 2020 after he was taken into custody by Rochester police during a mental health crisis.

Last year, state Senator Kevin Parker, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill seeking to clarify the use-of-force conversation and the term “justified” as applied to excessive force.

“By reimagining policing, we can develop a comprehensive approach to ensure the safety and well-being of all community members,” he said in a statement, detailing the legislation and related police reform efforts.

About this project

This story is part of Good Cop Bad Cop, an investigative project from the USA Today Network, Central Current and Syracuse University. Over 30 reporting students from the Newhouse School dug into decades of New York police misconduct records to uncover policy and safety missteps among officers from Buffalo to Westchester County, and explain why these infractions matter to the public.