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Q&A
Squad 5 operations and staffing levels
1:11:43
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130 sec
Council Member Brewer inquires about Squad 5, which is responsible for investigations into elected officials. Commissioner Strauber provides information on the squad's current staffing and capacity to perform investigations.
- Squad 5 has an active headcount of 18 with one vacancy
- The squad has in-house auditors, attorneys, and experienced staff in various categories
- For large-scale investigations, staff from other parts of the agency may be brought in to support Squad 5
Gale Brewer
1:11:43
Alright.
1:11:44
Thank you.
1:11:45
Just in terms of squad five, which sort of was brought by mister Wesseler, which is the one that's responsible for, elected officials in terms of investigations.
1:11:57
So do the squad's investigation from your, experience increase when an administration changes over?
1:12:04
Do you look at retroactively at some of the previous administration's actions?
1:12:10
And then are again, do you have the capacity to perform for this particular squad in, your current staffing levels?
1:12:18
You could argue that you don't have enough staffing for any levels, but particularly in this one.
Jocelyn E. Strauber
1:12:23
Right.
1:12:23
So so the current, active headcount in in that squad is 18, which is sizable.
1:12:31
NYCHA, which we spoke about, is kind of an outlier in terms of size, which is great, but but that's not really consistent with most of our squads.
1:12:38
So they have they have 18.
1:12:39
They have one vacancy.
1:12:41
You know, we have, over the last few years, done everything we can to give them the headcount that they need.
1:12:47
They also have in house auditors who are very talented, who do, you know, the complex fraud cases.
1:12:54
They have they have attorneys.
1:12:55
They have, you know, wonderfully experienced staff in various kind of categories.
1:13:00
It is also the case that for large scale investigations of the kind that they've been working on, we will occasionally, and we certainly had to do this over the past year, bring in staff to support them from other parts of the agency and not just from our dedicated digital forensics unit or e discovery folks, but people from other investigative squads who otherwise would be focused on their agencies.
1:13:28
That model has worked for us in terms of facilitating their ability to do the work that they do.
1:13:35
Would we have more people in that squad if we could?
1:13:39
You know, we might like all across our squads, but I think, you know, I think and I hope they would agree that that they have gotten what they have needed to do their work, albeit, you know, in the overburdened way that I feel like all of our staff is is working.
Gale Brewer
1:13:53
Right.