Update: The NYCLU obtained an updated set of records from the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) in April 2023. The records include information about misconduct investigations completed by the CCRB as of April 2023.
The NYPD Misconduct Complaint Database, which the NYCLU obtained through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests, is a repository of complaints made by the public on record at the CCRB. The database includes 302,801 unique complaint records involving 107,187 incidents. Since 2000, 38,272 active or former NYPD officers were named in misconduct investigations. The database does not include pending complaints for which the CCRB has not completed an investigation as of April 2023.
Using the CCRB complaint history data, the NYCLU built a search tool to make the information more accessible. Each row of the database represents a unique complaint made against an NYPD officer, including the officer’s name, race or ethnicity, rank, and current command (the NYPD unit where the officer was most recently assigned at the time that the complaint was filed at the time of the incident). It is not uncommon for a single police-civilian encounter to result in multiple complaints against the same officer or against multiple officers. Of the complaints that include the self-reported race of the impacted person, 13 percent are white, and about 80 percent are Black or Latinx. Of all complaints naming a NYPD officer since the 1980s, 60 percent are about white officers and 37 percent are about Black or Latinx officers.
Information about discipline imposed on officers and people impacted in complaints is limited in records that predate January 2000. The “Officer ID” field included in complaints received before 2000 is not consistent with the same field in records received after 2000. Given these limitations, the “Sort by Officer” view provides a summary of the complaint histories of individual officers since January 2000.
Details about the CCRB investigation process can be found on their website. The CCRB also has a tool that allows a user to download the complaint history of individual officers, and maintains a more narrow version of our database here, which is updated on a daily basis.
The app on this page is required to load a large amount of data, so you will likely experience a delay and may notice that your browser has slowed while the data loads. Please allow 30 seconds to load properly.
The database includes the following categories of information:
- Last Name: Last name of officer named in the complaint.
- First Name: First name of officer named in the complaint.
- Rank: Rank of officer named in complaint at the time of the incident (e.g., Captain).
- Command: NYPD unit where the named officer was assigned at the time of the incident (e.g., the 5th Precinct).
- Incident Date: Date on which the incident took place.
- Complaint Category: Category of misconduct within the CCRB’s jurisdiction, which includes Force, Abuse of Authority, Discourtesy, and Offensive Language.
- Allegation: Short description of the action in the complaint (e.g., Gun Drawn).
- CCRB Finding: The CCRB’s final evaluation of the complaint. Details can be found on the CCRB website.
- Penalty Type: Type of NYPD penalty given to the officer named in the complaint. If two types of discipline were imposed, the field retains the more severe type.
- Penalty Detail: NYPD penalty given to the officer named in the complaint.
Officer Race: Race/ethnicity of officer named in the complaint.
Race of Impacted Person: Self-reported race/ethnicity of the person impacted in the incident (only present for complaints processed after the year 2000).
Precinct Location: NYPD precinct where the incident took place.
Employment Status: Indicator of whether the officer is still active or retired.
- Officer ID: This is a unique number the CCRB creates and assigns to each officer about whom it receives a complaint. This number does not correspond to any number the NYPD assigns to officers, such as a badge number.
- Incident ID: This is a unique number the CCRB assigns to each incident about which it receives a complaint. Multiple officers may be the subject of a complaint about the same incident.
In addition to the above information, the updated FOIL data we received from CCRB includes the following variables: gender of officer, gender and age of impacted person, date on which the complaint was received and closed by the CCRB, reason for the incident, outcome of the incident, and the number of days the officer had spent on the force at the time of the incident. To access the raw database, including all information received in the FOIL request, and file specification details, please visit the NYCLU GitHub.
For answers to frequently asked questions, please visit our FAQ page.
