1. Composition of the NYPD

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the largest police force in the USA, with more than 38,000 serving officers at the end of 1995. The department is divided into 76 precincts covering the five boroughs of New York City (NYC): Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. In the spring of 1995 the NYC Housing Authority Police Department and the NYC Transit Police Department (comprising a total of 7,000 officers) were merged with the NYPD.

2 Inquiries into the NYPD

Since its creation in the last century, the NYPD has suffered from a series of corruption scandals, running in approximately 20-year cycles, followed by investigations and periods of reform. A major inquiry conducted by the Knapp Commission in 1972 found institutionalized corruption throughout the department, mainly involving officers taking bribes to allow gamblers, prostitutes and others to avoid arrest. A number of reforms followed, including reorganization of the department's Internal Affairs Division (IAD), and the creation of the post of a State Special Prosecutor to prosecute police officers for corruption. This post, which operated independently of the local prosecutors (district attorneys), was dissolved in 1990.
However, new allegations of corruption surfaced in 1992 when six NYC police officers were arrested on drugs charges by the Suffolk County Police Department, and questions were raised as to how they managed to avoid detection for so long. The renewed scandal led to the appointment of the Mollen Commission of Inquiry in July 1992 by the then-mayor of New York City, David N. Dinkins.In its report published in July 1994, the Mollen Commission found serious corruption among patrol officers in several of the city's high crime precincts which, though no longer as pervasive as the bribery uncovered by the Knapp Commission, was of a far more serious nature. The corruption included groups of officers protecting and assisting narcotics traffickers; conducting unlawful searches and seizures; committing perjury and falsifying records; and engaging directly in drug trafficking and robberies. The Commission found that the department from the top downwards had failed to monitor or adequately investigate officers guilty of abuses and that senior officers practised a deliberate “blindness” to corruption, with IAD investigations serving to minimize rather than expose corruption. It also found that corrupt officers were able to operate with impunity in certain areas largely because of a “code of silence” in which even honest officers were unwilling, or afraid, to incriminate their colleagues. The code of silence, the Commission found, was particularly powerful in crime-ridden precincts where fear and alienation from the local community had bred an “Us versus Them” mentality and officers depended upon each other for support. The report cited examples where officers who had tried to report or investigate police misconduct had suffered from hostility, lack of cooperation and in some cases reprisals.

The Police Department has taken steps to address the problem of corruption and other misconduct since the Mollen inquiry, a process which began while the Commission was still sitting. During the past two years dozens of officers - the largest group from the 30th Precinct in Harlem - have been arrested on charges including perjury, extortion and narcotics trafficking. There have also been internal reforms within the department in line with the Mollen Commission's recommendations. These have included an overhaul of the IAD and its field units into a centralized Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB); new procedures for monitoring officers for corruption and brutality and changes in recruitment and training policy.
The Mollen Commission recommended that the Police Department should retain primary responsibility for investigating corruption within the force. However, one of its central recommendations was the creation of a permanent oversight agency, independent of the department, which would perform continuous assessments of the NYPD's own anti-corruption measures and, where necessary, conduct its own investigations. This proposal has not been implemented and is the subject of dispute between present Mayor Rudolf W.Guiliani and the City Council. The City Council passed a bill setting up an independent to monitor and investigate corruption along the lines recommended by Mollen, but this was vetoed by the mayor who established his own panel by executive order. Unlike the council's proposal, the mayor's panel has no independent powers to investigate police corruption.