Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised the NYPD Commissioner Let Another Killer Cop Off the Hook

It appeared to be a rare moment of accountability for the NYPD. In February, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado, the administrative judge who oversees the NYPD’s disciplinary trial room, found lieutenant Jonathan Rivera guilty of first-degree assault and violating department guidelines on the use of force.

On October 17, 2019, then-sergeant Rivera shot and killed Allan Feliz in an altercation that began as a routine traffic stop and quickly escalated into a physical confrontation. Rivera tasered Feliz multiple times and threatened to shoot him before discharging the fatal bullet.

During his trial, Rivera claimed that when Feliz’s car moved, he feared his fellow officer could be crushed under the vehicle and therefore fired his weapon into Feliz’s chest at point blank range.

Maldonado, however, after hearing Rivera’s testimony and reviewing the evidence presented during the trial, characterized his statements as “an after the fact fabrication created to conceal his actual motivation for using deadly force.” Such testimony, she wrote, “undermined his credibility and the truthfulness of his stated subjective belief that it was immediately necessary to discharge his firearm to protect [his fellow officer].” Based on her findings of the facts at issue, she recommended Rivera’s removal from the force.

Maldonado determined that Rivera’s use of force was not justified, and that his fears for the safety of one of the officers at the scene were not “objectively reasonable.”

Yet in August, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch overrode the CCRB and Maldonado’s recommendation, declining to issue any discipline to Rivera at all.

Police in New York City Rarely Face Consequences for Misconduct and Abuse

The case was brought by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), the independent agency that investigates complaints of NYPD misconduct.

The last time the NYPD terminated an officer following a case brought by the CCRB was in 2019, when officer Daniel Pantaleo was fired for choking Eric Garner to death.

Maldonado was also the judge in Pantaleo’s case.

In these two instances, hers was a lone voice for accountability amidst a sea of permissiveness around NYPD abuse. In a 2021 report, the NYCLU analyzed 180,700 complaints brought to the CCRB between 2000 and 2021 and found that less than one percent resulted in serious discipline, such as forfeiting vacation days, suspension, probation or termination. In substantiated cases, where a preponderance of evidence pointed to misconduct, the NYPD overrode the CCRB’s recommendations 74 percent of the time.

The report also found that Black and Brown New Yorkers bear a disproportionate amount of abuse by the police. Latine people were about twice as likely to be identified as the injured party in a CCRB complaint than white people. Black people were about six times more likely to be listed as the injured party in a complaint than white people.

Tisch’s Failure is Business as Usual for the NYPD

When she assumed command of the police force, Commissioner Jessica Tisch promised to clean house, saying she was committed to strengthening discipline in the department, embracing accountability, and ensuring that officers who engage in misconduct face consequences for breaking the rules.

Yet at the first major opportunity to follow through on this promise, Tisch has let New Yorkers down.

With the CCRB and Judge Maldonado both recommending Rivera’s termination, Tisch couldn’t have asked for more solid justification to fire Rivera. Instead, she showed New Yorkers that the NYPD cares more about shielding its officers from discipline than it does about protecting New Yorkers from police abuse.

In the aftermath of Tisch’s decision, Mery Verdeja, Feliz’s mother, told the press, “Commissioner Tisch, despite her promises, has made one thing clear: her allegiance is not to the people of New York, but to her own interests and to violent, unaccountable cops who terrorize our communities.”

A Flawed Process Leaves Victims Waiting for a Justice That Never Arrives

This tragic case illustrates key flaws in the protocol of the NYPD disciplinary process.

First, Rivera should have been charged with violating the department’s tactical guidelines. But the CCRB missed the deadline to file this kind of misconduct charge, due in large part to the fact that the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division, which investigated the case first (and did not find Rivera guilty of misconduct), failed to provide critical evidence to the CCRB until a week after the statute of limitations had passed. This raised the burden for prosecutors, who now had to prove that Rivera was guilty not just of violating the department’s internal rules, but of misconduct that could have been charged as a crime – in this case, assault in the first degree. (The prosecution also brought charges of menacing in the second degree, of which he was found not guilty.)

Maldonado found Rivera guilty under this tougher standard, but it is easy to imagine a similar scenario in which an officer who poses a danger to public safety isn’t disciplined at all simply because the NYPD stonewalls investigations past the point of the statute of limitations and there is not sufficient evidence to prove them guilty of a crime.

The NYPD should not have this power to withhold evidence and essentially choose whether they will cooperate with the CCRB. The department has an interest in preventing the CCRB from doing its work and the NYPD has proven it cannot be trusted with this responsibility.

Second, Tisch’s actions show giving the police commissioner final authority over disciplinary decisions will continue to deny justice to victims of police abuse. This incredible, unaccountable, and easily abused authority makes the NYPD less effective and more dangerous because it leads to misconduct going unpunished and allows officers who have harmed New Yorkers to continue to patrol the streets.

NYPD Practices Prioritize Criminalization Over Safety

Feliz’s killing also highlights the fact that New York is policed in a way that does not keep New Yorkers safe. While traffic stops – likely the most common interaction police have with civilians – do not often end in death, they do frequently result in needless involvement in the criminal legal system, particularly for the Black and Brown men who are disproportionately targeted.

Police have the power to pull over a driver for many minor infractions. Rivera and his partners claimed that they stopped Feliz for not appearing to wear a seatbelt. When they saw that Feliz and his companion were, in fact, buckled in, the officers proceeded in running his license anyway – setting in motion a sequence of events that led to Feliz’s death.

A report by the NYCLU analyzing data collected between 2022 and 2024 found that 83 of drivers stopped were male, with Black and Latine men disproportionately likely to be pulled over. Police were also much more likely to escalate stops involving Black and Latine men. Latine drivers were searched at roughly six times the rate of white drivers, and Black drivers were searched at ten times the rate that white drivers were. Almost nine in ten people arrested during a traffic stop were Black or Latine, and in cases where the police resorted to using force against a driver, 87 percent were Black or Latine.

Traffic stops, and their serious consequences, are on the rise in New York City. In 2024, approximately 15 percent of all arrests began with a traffic stop, up from approximately 11 percent in 2023 and 10 percent in 2022.

New Yorkers understand that having police increasingly harass Black and Brown drivers does nothing to keep our city safe. A recent YouGov poll conducted for the ACLU found that most New Yorkers are opposed to this kind of excessive policing and instead want services that prevent dangerous crime.

Seventy percent of New York voters support legislation to limit or end police enforcement of certain minor traffic violations to reduce unnecessary police interactions with drivers. Sixty-five percent agreed that no longer tasking police with enforcing non-safety traffic violations will help improve safety in communities, allowing them to focus on dangerous driving and solving serious crimes.

Evidence shows that traffic stops do not increase public safety, but they do result in trauma for the people who are stopped, and a further cratering of trust in police.

We cannot trust police officers who escalate situations and turn immediately to violence to keep us safe. Their continued impunity puts us all in danger.