Then-newly appointed New York City Police Commissioner Edward A. Caban raises his new shield during a press conference at the NYPD 40th Precinct on July 17, 2023, in New York City.reporters uncover abuse and impunity inside the NYPD, using confidential documents and insider interviews, giving the public unprecedented access to civilian complaints against officers.
Villafane received a letter from the agency about its conclusions. “I was happy and I was relieved,” she recalled. The next step would be a disciplinary trial overseen by the New York Police Department, during which prosecutors from the oversight agency would present evidence and question the officer in a public forum.Exercising a little-known authority called “retention,” the commissioner, Edward Caban, ensured the case would never go to trial.
Indeed, the department does not publish the commissioner’s decisions to retain cases, and the civilian oversight agency makes those details public only months after the fact. Civilians are not told that the Police Department ended their cases.obtained internal records of some cases and learned details of others using public records, lawsuits, social media accounts and other sources.
The review board found that the officer, Raul Torres, should face trial. But the Police Department has yet to move the case forward, a fact Harvin learned from a reporter. “They take care of their own,” he said, shaking his head. A Police Department spokesperson declined to answer detailed questions, responding instead with a one-sentence statement: “The NYPD continues to work closely with the Civilian Complaint Review Board in accordance with the terms of the memorandum of understanding.”
While commissioners can still choose to impose significant punishment after retaining a case, they often don’t. In 40% of the cases that Caban has retained, he has ordered no discipline. In the cases in which he has ordered discipline, it has mostly been light, such as the loss of a few vacation days. The most severe punishment, ProPublica found, was docking an officer 10 vacation days for knocking a cellphone out of the hand of someone who was recording him.