Q&A
Reasons for NYPD's lower agreement rate with DOI recommendations
0:58:58
ยท
154 sec
Commissioner Strauber explains various reasons why the NYPD might agree to implement fewer DOI recommendations compared to other agencies. She provides context and examples of common responses for recommendations that are not implemented.
- Recommendations going beyond statutory requirements (e.g., POST Act) are often rejected
- NYPD sometimes claims to have sufficient in-house resources instead of accepting external expertise
- The department may assert they are already doing what's recommended
- Policy disagreements on specific issues (e.g., gang database management) lead to rejected recommendations
Yusef Salaam
0:58:58
Also, is there any indication that the NYPD agrees to implement fewer DOR recommendations?
0:59:03
And if so, why?
Jocelyn Strauber
0:59:07
Well, I mean, we get an explanation.
0:59:08
I I don't have sort of a global answer to the question, and I'll note that the data I'm giving you spans a 10 year period.
0:59:16
So that's different administrations, different police departments.
0:59:20
I think I can categorize some of the common responses for recommendations that are not implemented.
0:59:27
One category, for example, we do a report on the post act, and particularly our first post act report, which was issued in 2022, November of 2022, we made recommendations that went outside the statutory requirement because we thought the department should be doing more than the post act required.
0:59:46
And a very large majority of those got rejected.
0:59:49
So that's like one category.
0:59:50
If the department is operating under a legal framework like the Post Act, which as I understand it was hotly negotiated and debated, recommendations that they do more than the statute requires, those were not, you know, those were not well received.
1:00:05
We've had other types of recommendations just off the top of my head with our overtime report.
1:00:11
We wanted the department to go to an outside expert to conduct a greater study than we were able to conduct in our report, which was based on a small sample size, on the negative effects of overtime.
1:00:22
And I believe, and IG Barrett maybe can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the response to that was we have sufficient in house resources to do that.
1:00:31
We don't need to go to the outside.
1:00:32
We've got that expertise.
1:00:34
Sometimes the response is we are already doing what you ask us to do even though we may not think it's being done to a sufficient extent.
1:00:44
And then for some areas, I'm thinking now about like the gang database report where the department actually accepted a significant percentage of our recommendations, there were some areas where they just disagreed with us as a policy matter.
1:00:56
We thought there should be reviews of, an individual's status in the database more frequently, and the department disagreed.
1:01:04
They said, like, we're not gonna we're not gonna do that review as often as you say we should.
1:01:08
We wanted other sort of stringent, mechanisms in place if the review wasn't done on a timely basis, like dropping people from the database if they hadn't been reviewed on time automatically.
1:01:20
The department said, no, we're not gonna do that.
1:01:21
So sometimes there's a policy, you know, really what I would describe as a policy disagreement.
1:01:26
They don't they don't accept for whatever reason our view of, you know, how an issue should be handled.