“The result is a series of revised rules that violate statutory mandates, lack any rational justification, unfairly prejudice police officers, and threaten to undermine public confidence in the CCRB,” the petition states.
The police union calls the CCRB’s new authority arbitrary and capricious and a “gross overreaching by the CCRB, in a manner that undermines its legislative purpose.”
The petition claims that the resolution will result in the funneling “of sexual misconduct complaints to an agency that admittedly lacks the training and experience to handle them.”
The PBA slammed the CCRB resolution in a statement Tuesday.
In a statement Tuesday, the PBA called the CCRB resolution a “bold-faced power grab.”
“The CCRB has always been infected with an anti-police bias, and has never lived up to its responsibility under the city charter to conduct ‘complete, thorough and impartial’ investigations of civilian complaints ‘in a manner in which the public and police department have confidence,’” PBA President Lynch said. “But these recent rule changes are a bold-faced power grab to create a CCRB regime that is more abusive to police officers than ever before.”
Lynch added, “The deck was already stacked before these illegal rules were adopted and so, we are asking the court to level it out.”
The PBA’s petition also claims officers face the risk of being subject to multiple overlapping investigations and inconsistent determinations because the CCRB resolution lacks mechanisms to recognize the potential for separate investigations by the Internal Affairs Bureau or other agencies.
The CCRB declined to comment on the pending litigation, but a spokesperson said the board is “committed to conducting its investigations in a thorough, impartial manner.”
The PBA is the designated collective-bargaining agent for the more than 23,000 police officers employed by the NYPD.
In January, the union sued Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill to block the release of body-cam footage of three police-related shootings.