In a recent study conducted in New York City, it was found that less than 13 percent of all complaints of “excessive force” made against officers in the New York City Police Department are eventually substantiated by evidence, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The study was conducted by the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), and was leaked to the website ProPublica. Of all the various kinds of complaints that can be filed against police officers, use of excessive force was by far the least-substantiated out of all of them. By contrast, the most likely complaints to be substantiated, claims of “abuse of authority” such as unwarranted searches and seizures, only saw 30 percent of complaints verified.
The data extends as far back as the year 1985, and encompasses over 33,000 complaints against 4,000 NYPD officers over the course of that 35-year period. Only around 7,000 of those claims were for excessive force, while over 20,000 were for abuse of authority. The study even included the number of cases that were unfounded, meaning that the claims were proven beyond doubt to be false; when those numbers are included, the percentage of confirmed cases of excessive force is even smaller.
The study further proves that the scrutiny and criticism of the NYPD, like other police departments, is largely unwarranted. Nevertheless, the rising far-left calls to defund or abolish America’s police have hit the NYPD the hardest; in addition to the abolition of its plainclothes anti-crime unit of over 600 officers, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.) has cut over $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget.