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Civilian Complaint Review Board Refutes Police Union's 'Myths' About Ballot Proposals and Its NYPD Oversight Work


mayor pd comm

(photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


The Civilian Complaint Review Board has responded to the Police Benevolent Association’s efforts to kill a ballot referendum that would enhance the agency’s powers. The CCRB began promoting a fact sheet on its website and social media Friday aimed at “correcting misinformation” days after the launch of the PBA’s campaign, calling the union’s communications “myth” as it seeks a “no” vote on ballot question two.

Last week, the PBA began urging its members and allies to vote “no” on the ballot proposal before voters this fall and has a statement of opposition to the measure in the city’s official voter guide, Gotham Gazette first reported. The set of proposals -- question two of five -- would amend the city charter to expand the CCRB’s operational capacity and jurisdiction, while also tweaking how appointments to the board are made and requiring more transparency and communication from the police commissioner.

All five ballot questions contain proposed changes to the charter developed by a multilateral commission tasked with examining the city’s central governing document. Voters can approve or disapprove of each during the October 26-November 3 early voting period or on Election Day, November 5.

Question 2 on the ballot includes four changes that CCRB officials say would improve the administration of its mandate and a fifth that would expand its jurisdiction to allow it to look into allegations of officers suspected of lying while under investigation for misconduct.

The administrative changes would allow the Board to delegate subpoena power to the executive director and guarantee its budget based on a formula tied to the NYPD’s officer headcount. The proposals would also increase the size and appointments to the Board and require the police commissioner to explain to the CCRB when deviating from the agency’s disciplinary recommendations.

Police reform advocates and the CCRB chair, Fred Davie, believe the changes to the city charter amount to a small shift in the powers and performance of the agency but will add layers of accountability to the police department. The CCRB is a civilian agency separate from the NYPD and tasked with investigating civilian-reported complaints of police officer misconduct in a limited set of circumstances: when excessive force or offensive language may have been used, or when police officers are said to have abused their authority or acted discourteously.

In opposing the proposed reforms in Question 2, the PBA, the city’s largest law enforcement union, posted to its website and social media claims that the measure constituted a large-scale “power grab” by a police oversight agency with a history of “anti-police bias.”

Debate over the ballot measure comes just months after the CCRB prosecuted Officer Daniel Pantaleo for misconduct in the arrest that led to Eric Garner’s death on Staten Island in 2014. That departmental trial led to Pantaleo’s dismissal by NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill despite the PBA’s assertion that Pantaleo did nothing wrong.

The CCRB fact sheet attempts to illuminate seven of what the page refers to as “myths” promulgated by the PBA as part of its campaign against the ballot measure.

Citing a statement of opposition submitted by the PBA and published in the city’s voter guide, the CCRB takes issue with the police union’s description of Question 2 as giving the CCRB “sweeping new powers.” The fact sheet emphasizes that only one of the charter changes -- the one dealing with suspected police lying -- would constitute a wholly new power. It notes, “The Board already has the authority to subpoena evidence,” and allowing it to delegate that power to the executive director simply makes the process “more efficient.”

The PBA statement in the voter guide, which is published by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Board, also says Question 2 would “drastically” increase the CCRB’s budget. If approved, Question 2 would guarantee the budget large enough to support a CCRB staff size equal to .65 percent of the police department’s headcount of uniformed officers. The fact sheet points out that the current budget ratio this year was only slightly lower, at .59 percent, than what would be guaranteed under the proposed amendment.

“Under this new requirement, we would continue to work closely with the Office of Management and Budget to determine the amount of funding necessary to maintain this level of staffing,” wrote CCRB Executive Director Jonathan Darche in an email to Gotham Gazette.

In its voter guide statement, the PBA asserts the ballot measure would “reduce the authority of the Police Commissioner.”

The CCRB fact sheet refutes that, stating: “The Police Commissioner would maintain the same level of authority over discipline, but the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau would no longer be solely responsible for investigating false official statements made by officers during a CCRB investigation.”

The fact sheet does not mention the proposed change that would require by law the police commissioner to explain in writing any decision to impose a lesser form of discipline than the one recommended by the CCRB. That requirement already exists under a 2012 memorandum of understanding between the NYPD and CCRB, and would be codified in the city charter if Question 2 is passed by voters.

The CCRB also points to posts from the PBA’s Twitter account that accuse the CCRB of harboring “rampant anti-police bias” and calling it “an outrageously dysfunctional agency.” In response the CCRB cites its mandate to conduct “fact-based investigations of police misconduct” and points out that, according to its rules, one of each three-member panel, which make decisions on CCRB cases, must be a Board member designated by the Police Commissioner. On the matter of alleged agency dysfunction, the fact sheet points to upward trends over the last five years in number of cases closed and mediated.

In another tweet, the PBA stated: “By encouraging their clients to file false & frivolous CCRB complaints, [“criminal advocates”] can sidetrack court cases and get guilty gang members, drug dealers & thieves out of jail.” In response to this, the CCRB cites data on the number of unsubstantiated misconduct allegations it has processed.

“Of the allegations closed in 2018, 463, or 8% of total allegations, were unfounded,” the fact sheet states. It adds: “In the past decade, only 52 complainants have ever been found by the Agency to have made repeated unfounded complaints against officers.”

One of the PBA claims appears to refer directly to the 2019 Charter Revision Commission, the body that devised the proposed amendments, rather than to the CCRB. In a tweet kicking-off its vote “no” campaign last Monday, the PBA wrote, “Political extremists and cop-haters have been attacking NYC police officers in the streets for years. Now, they're doing it at the ballot box.”

In its fact sheet, the CCRB responds: “The Charter Commission, which ultimately decided what would and wouldn’t be on the ballot this year, was comprised of 15 members of varying backgrounds and degrees of support for police oversight. The Charter Commission Members were appointed by elected officials including the Mayor, Borough Presidents, and City Council Speaker.” City Comptroller Scott Stringer and then-Public Advocate Letitia James also appointed members.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Where Top City Officials Who Appointed the 2019 Charter Revision Commission Stand on Its Proposals


council finance dromm johnson mbdblasio fiscal budget

(photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photo Office)


Mayor Bill de Blasio and other top city officials have remained mostly quiet about their positions on a set of proposed changes to city government and elections, which are set to go before voters when early voting begins on Saturday. The five “yes” or “no” ballot questions include 19 distinct proposals from the 2019 Charter Revision Commission, whose members were appointed by the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, City Council speaker, and five borough presidents. Yet those same elected officials have been hesitant to say whether they approve of the commission’s recommendations.

While some of the city’s top elected officials, namely City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, have when prodded expressed their thoughts on some or all of the proposed charter amendments, Mayor de Blasio is said to still be reviewing the proposals and other top officials have been reluctant to opine on the potentially consequential changes.

The ballot proposals include instituting ranked-choice voting for some city elections, strengthening the city’s civilian police oversight body, and making various other changes to city governance, budgeting, and land use processes.

Gotham Gazette surveyed the city’s most powerful elected officials to find out how they plan to vote on the proposals and whether they have taken positions on any provisions in particular. Almost all of the elected officials contacted had at least one appointment to the body that created the proposed amendments (Williams is the exception given that he took over as public advocate after his predecessor, Attorney General Letitia James, had made the office’s one appointment to the charter commision).

Williams, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Comptroller Scott Stringer, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer have all indicated they support a “yes” vote on all five ballot questions. (Johnson had initially expressed enthusiastic support for a “yes” vote on question one, which includes instituting ranked-choice voting, and on the land use question, number five, then said he supports all five sets of proposals in an October 31 tweet to Gotham Gazette).

The commission was conceived by James and Brewer, and created through City Council legislation with the support of Johnson, who wound up with the power to appoint several members and the commission chair. Appointments were apportioned so that no one official or entity held a majority. Gotham Gazette contacted each of the appointing offices and received varying degrees of response, while Johnson and Williams made some of their thoughts known during a recent radio and podcast interview, respectively, as well as Johnson's subsequent tweet.

To amend the Charter, the city’s central governing document, the proposed changes must be approved by voters, who can weigh in either during the new nine-day early voting period October 26 through November 3, or on Election Day, November 5.

The commission developed the five questions, which encompass 19 individual measures to change city governance. As captured by the commission, each question covers a different category of potential reform: elections, Civilian Complaint Review Board, ethics and governance, city budget, and land use.

Question one, which mainly deals with ranked-choice voting, has garnered widespread support and almost no opposition, and could have a major impact on how party primaries and special elections work.

Together, the changes in questions two through five amount to a relatively minor retailoring of certain aspects of city government, not a large-scale overhaul. But, some of the provisions are considered important by various officials, experts, and interest groups.

Perhaps the most controversial changes voters will decide on related to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city’s civilian police oversight agency that investigates certain allegations of police misconduct. One provision within question two would expand the jurisdiction of the CCRB to include prosecuting officers who lie while they are under investigation. That provision is being supported by many police reformers and opposed by the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the state’s largest law enforcement union.

Another proposal, found within question four, to allow the city to use a “rainy day fund” for savings during times of prosperity is being supported by the Citizens Budget Commission and other fiscal watchdogs.

Mayor de Blasio has not taken a public position on any of the five questions or the specific proposed amendments they contain.

“Mayor de Blasio continues to review the Charter revision questions that will be on the ballot,” wrote administration spokesperson Will Baskin-Gerwitz in an email to Gotham Gazette. De Blasio appointed four of the 15 members of the Charter Revision Commission that devised the proposals, two of whom currently serve as top officials in his administration.

While still avoiding a public position, Baskin-Gerwitz says the mayor “encourages every New Yorker to do their civic duty and have their say on their city’s Charter after early voting begins on October 26 or on Election Day November 5.”

De Blasio’s non-position on this year’s proposed charter amendments contrasts with his push last fall to secure a “yes” vote on the three ballot questions last year, placed on the ballot by a charter revision commission created and appointed entirely by the mayor.

Four of the officials contacted by Gotham Gazette have publicly expressed support for all five of this year’s ballot questions.

Hazel Crampton-Hays, a spokesperson for Comptroller Scott Stringer, said he supports all five proposals but would not comment on any specific proposal nor whether he is urging New Yorkers to vote in favor of the amendments. Some of that hesitancy may be related to questions about whether elected officials are allowed to in their official capacities discuss items on an election ballot.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is “100% supportive of all five ballot questions and is urging New Yorkers to vote for them all,” according to her press secretary, Courtney McGee. McGee did not elaborate on any of the positions or what outreach Brewer has done. There are major questions about how many New Yorkers actually know about the ballot questions and the ability of the Charter Revision Commission to get the word out, especially with limited help from top elected officials.

On the Max & Murphy podcast, Public Advocate Williams said, “I am in favor of voting ‘yes’ on all of the ballot initiatives, including ranked-choice voting.” A number of the proposals deal directly with the office of the public advocate. Two of the provisions would give the public advocate an appointment to the Conflicts of Interest Board and Civilian Complaint Review Board, and another would guarantee the public advocate’s budget at a set minimum calculated based on the size of the overall city budget.

“If people come out and vote, [we] may have an independent budget, which I think is critical. It sucks if you have to go ask the people for money that you are supposed to hold accountable,” Williams said.

Johnson, who appointed four charter revision commissioners including the chair, spoke about two of the measures -- ranked-choice voting, and changes to the city’s land use process -- on The Brian Lehrer Show on Monday. He said he supported both -- which are parts of question one and five, respectively -- but did not discuss any of the other proposals. Johnson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article, but the speaker then made his opinion clear in the October 31 tweet.

Other officials have either weighed in on specific aspects of the ballot questions, did not respond to requests for comment, or declined to comment.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams “supports ranked-choice voting, and encourages New Yorkers to support it,” wrote Jonah Allon, an Adams spokesperson, in an email.

“He has also been a strong champion of police accountability and transparency dating back to his days serving in the NYPD, and supports any proposal that would further the goal of making police more accountable, while upholding the public safety gains we’ve made in recent decades,” Allon wrote, apparently referring to the amendments related to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. He did not clarify whether the borough president explicitly supports that ballot question or others.

“We are closely reviewing the other questions, and encourage a robust debate in the weeks ahead to ensure all New Yorkers are informed and make their voices heard on these important proposals,” added Allon.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., and Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, the lone Republican with an appointment to the charter commission, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Queens Borough President Melinda Katz declined to comment. Katz is the Democratic nominee for Queens District Attorney, appearing on the ballot in her borough along with the charter questions, and expected to win that election easily.

Attorney General Letitia James, who as public advocate co-sponsored the legislation creating the charter commission and appointed one of its members, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Some officials or their representatives expressed trepidation about whether they were allowed under the city’s conflicts of interest law to promote their positions on ballot questions at all. During his conversation with Lehrer, Johnson made sure to indicate he was talking about his personal, not official, positions on ranked-choice voting and other measures.

A Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) representative said they could not comment on general policy matters related to elected official conduct, but added in an email, “To the extent that elected officials may not understand the scope of the application of the conflicts of interest law to their conduct you should feel free to refer them to us.” The spokesperson said they could not respond to a question asking whether any officials had sought clarity from COIB on publicly promoting their positions on the referenda.

Johnson, Adams, Stringer, and Diaz, Jr. are all Democrats expected to run for mayor in 2021, what would be the first city election to use ranked-choice voting should it pass.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note: this article has been updated with Johnson's Oct. 31 tweet.

The Fine Print On Your Ballot That Isn't Fine Print


2019 sample ballot al 5 crc qs

(a sample ballot - back side, with charter revision questions)


Some of the biggest decisions voters can make on New York City’s ballot this fall will be in the fine print.

The 19 city charter amendments being put before voters will appear on the back of the ballot in miniscule, 7.5-point font. The proposed amendments, presented in five “yes” or “no” questions, cover large swaths of the city’s core governing document and if approved have the potential to alter key components of how the city operates.

They include instituting ranked-choice voting for some elections, beefing up police department oversight, and more. A number of the changes are consequential but technical in nature and require voters to read a degree of granular detail. Language chosen by the 2019 Charter Revision Commission, certain legal requirements, and the desire to avoid a two-page ballot led the New York City Board of Elections to the 7.5 font that is of concern to election watchdogs.

“Generally speaking, as a matter of legibility one of the top [Election Assistance Commission] recommendations is to use a minimum 12-point font size for paper ballots, which of course aligns with public expectations as well,” according to Jarret Berg, a voting rights lawyer and co-founder of the nonpartisan election watchdog VoteEarlyNY.

In an election expected to have especially low turnout, and for ballot referenda, which in New York already tend to have lower response rates, the small font and the complexity of the questions could mean a very small number of voters will decide the outcome of the reforms. The ones that do will, for the first time, have an opportunity to cast ballots during nine days of early voting -- from October 26 to November 3 -- in addition to Election Day, November 5.

The city’s 2019 Charter Revision Commission developed the proposed amendments and the ballot language, but the city’s Board of Elections is responsible for the layout of the ballot, including the font size of the referenda.

“In fairness, I think the City Board would prefer -- all things being equal -- to offer a larger font size, but given several competing ballot layout and election administration considerations, providing a reasonable font size continues to be deprioritized,” said Berg.

There are a number of concerns and regulations the Board of Elections must take into account when designing the ballot, some of which conflict. Ballot questions, like the five that deal with issues of city elections and governance, must be written separately from the names of candidates according to rules set at the state level. According to the Board’s executive director, Michael Ryan, the ballot-reading machines require referenda to be printed on a separate sheet or side of the ballot in order to be properly scanned.

The Board of Elections tried using a two-page ballot to accommodate referenda during last year’s election to disastrous effect. That election, which included races for governor, Congress, state Legislature, and others, was marked by very high turnout, which along with the two-page ballot and inclement weather resulted in machines having to scan excessive volumes of paper and led to frequent malfunctions.

This year, there are very few elections to be decided. Each of the five questions appearing on the ballot contains three to five paragraphs of text covering multiple provisions (a total of 19). To keep them on a single sheet of paper, the board chose to squeeze all the questions onto the backside of the ballot using the tiny font.

The small font size “is so you could fit it onto a single page,” Ryan said in an interview. “We avoided as much as we could the prospect of going to a second page for all of the reasons we found out in November [2018].”

To assist voters, each poll site will be equipped with magnifying glasses at each privacy booth and poll workers have been trained to inform voters that ballot questions are on the back, according to Ryan. The ballots themselves instruct voters to flip the page with large arrows accompanied by the text, “Remember to vote on both sides.”

But Ryan is also encouraging voters to familiarize themselves with the ballot before they arrive at the polls using the BOE’s new website. The recently-launched site has a simple web address -- vote.nyc -- and is designed to be more user-friendly than the previous one. The homepage prominently features a poll-site locator where voters can enter their address and find out where they are assigned to vote during the early voting period and on Election Day (for most voters those sites are different). It can also show voters a preview of their unique ballot so they can review the candidates and ballot questions in advance.

“The days of waiting till you get to the poll site to figure out what you’re doing should be over. The information is available,” Ryan said. (There has also been some media coverage of the ballot questions, of course.)

The Board of Elections did not decide on the language or length of the questions it was responsible for laying out. That was done by the Charter Revision Commission, which developed them in conjunction with the city’s Law Department. The commission settled on the five question categories and the provisions within them over the course of many months of deliberations, soliciting recommendations and feedback from the public on nearly every dimension of the city charter.

“The BOE did not give a strict word length. We didn’t know how they would lay out the ballot but we attempted to balance providing clear and reasonably comprehensive questions while also providing enough background to allow voters to make intelligent decisions,” Marissa Solomon, the commission’s communications specialist, told Gotham Gazette.

Solomon said the Charter Revision Commission and the Law Department attempted to avoid lengthy descriptions while also steering away from legal jargon.

“The Board of Elections has informed us that abstracts, which contain more detail than the questions on the ballot, will also be available at polling places for voters who want more detailed information on one or more questions,” she added.

The layout of the ballot has been a focal point for election reformers and good government groups for years. It was something advocates sought to address this year when the State Legislature came under Democratic control for the first time in close to a decade.

“While there are several valid considerations that go into ballot design and layout, this is another area...where New York’s election law and practice has failed to keep up with modern notions of accessibility and basic fairness,” Berg told Gotham Gazette.

In March, the Legislature passed the Voter Friendly Ballot Act (VFBA), which codifies several design best practices that proponents say will make it easier for voters to understand and navigate the ballot. The bill has not been signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo; a spokesperson told Gotham Gazette that the legislation is under review.

The VFBA “does a number of interrelated things. It removes various requirements that are currently in law that make it more difficult to design the ballot effectively,” said Senator Brian Kavanagh, the bill’s sponsor, in an interview.

Right now, the ballots must have various images like party symbols and an index finger icon pointing toward candidate names, which take up space. The law “requires certain things to be all caps even though document usability professionals would tell you that all caps is not a particularly useful way” of increasing legibility, according to Kavanagh. “So some of the effects of that would be that you’d have more space on the ballot, especially on the other side of the ballot,” he said.

In terms of font size, the bill’s drafters focused on candidate names over ballot questions. “There is no mandate about font size for something like text of a referendum,” said Kavanagh, referring to the provisions of the bill.

“The thing that dictates the small size in New York City is something the city should change administratively,” he added.

Kavanagh believes one of the problems with the font size of ballot questions is that they have to be printed in multiple languages on the same page. He claims one way to fix that is to have multiple ballot styles with fewer languages printed on them.

“The city Board has the ability to do that and they have resisted that. I think they are concerned that administratively it’s hard to have different ballot styles,” he said.

Kavanagh admits having enough language-specific ballot styles would be a logistical challenge for the BOE. “But in my view it is far outweighed by the simple principle that people have to be able to read their ballots relatively easily,” he said, adding, “so I think it is a mistake for the city to be using 7.5-point font for these important questions that voters need to consider.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



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