NYPD May Have Unlawfully Searched a Bunch of People's Homes, If You Can Believe That
Crazy story but bear with me: between 2010 and 2016, the NYPD may have conducted as many as 180 improper searches of people’s homes. It sure doesn’t sound like them, I know, but that’s what the statistics say.
That number comes from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency which reviews citizen allegations of NYPD misconduct. The CCRB recently conducted a review of 1,762 complaints about home searches and substantiated 180 of them. A report from the agency cited “recurring practices and misapplication of the law” for the alleged misconduct.
According to the CCRB, a quarter of these unlawful searches led to injuries, 46 percent involved excessive force, and over half of the victims of the searches were black. When you consider that black people make up only about a quarter of the population of the city, it almost starts to seem like the cops unfairly target black people with this sort of thing.
Could it possibly be true? New York’s finest—running around busting into people’s apartments for no reason, acting like they’re above the law? I hesitate to believe it myself, but the numbers don’t lie.
