Sprawling BuzzFeed News report finds NYPD officers keep their jobs even after committing serious offenses
The New York Police Department has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up officers' indiscretions — even as those same officers remain on the force. A sprawling BuzzFeed News investigation of internal department files found that more than 300 officers have kept their jobs even after committing assault, driving under the influence, or in one case, threatening to kill someone.
The list of indiscretions committed is startling:
All of the officers were allowed to keep their jobs, partly because the department has no consistent disciplinary policy. The go-to punishment is "dismissal probation," BuzzFeed News explains, a penalty in name only as offenders continue "to do their job at their usual salary." In every one of the cases above, the officer in question was assigned to dismissal probation — but the policy can be "used to punish other officers arbitrarily," sources told BuzzFeed News, including "just for getting on their supervisors' bad sides."
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In the case of one single officer, Raymond Marrero, his various indiscretions cost the city roughly $900,000 to settle. Marrero still works for the department. Read more at BuzzFeed News.
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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