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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. announced today that a follow-up audit of the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) has found that the agency has shown marked improvement in its ability to manage its caseload in a timely and efficient manner. The most impressive change was that from July 1994 to July 2001 there was a 39.5 percentage point decrease in the number of substantiated cases that the CCRB referred to the NYPD that were more than 15 months old. The objective of the audit was to determine whether recommendations made in the first audit of the CCRB, Audit Report on Case Management Policies and Procedures of the Civilian Complaint Review Board (Audit #MH96-181A, issued June 25, 1998), were implemented. The current audit found that the majority of recommendations were either implemented or partially implemented with improvement noted.

"Our audit clearly demonstrates that overall the CCRB has demonstrated continued improvement and greater efficiency in completing its investigations and submitting substantiated cases to the NYPD in a timely manner," Thompson said. "While there is still room for improvement, citizens can be assured that the CCRB is working diligently to ensure that complaints of police misconduct brought before the CCRB will be handled responsibly."

Based on reviews of case files and data from July 1993 through June 1997, the earlier report concluded that too many cases exceeded the 18-month statute of limitations, and many cases, although completed within 18 months, were at-risk because they were sent to the NYPD too late for it to complete its own investigations and take disciplinary actions. The CCRB should refer substantiated cases to the NYPD with no less than three months remaining on the statute to ensure that the NYPD has sufficient time to review the case and act upon the CCRB's recommendations. Using this standard again in the new audit, the Comptroller's Office reviewed CCRB case data from July 1998-June 2001 and compared it to the data compiled from the previous audit. An analysis of the two periods found that the CCRB reduced the percentage of substantiated cases exceeding 15 months that it referred to the NYPD from an average of 56.8 percent from July 1994- June 1997 to an average of 17.3 percent for the period July 1998-June 2001, an improvement of 39.5 percentage points.

The audit also concluded that five of the previous audit's recommendations had been implemented. These include: tracking and monitoring the age of the case docket; reporting on the length of time it takes to complete a full investigation; working with the NYPD to set up a systematic procedure to get formal feedback from the NYPD; designing a plan of action to improve the accuracy and completeness of its computer-based data; and instituting quality control and review procedures to verify that data entry is accurate and complete.

Partially implemented recommendations include sending all substantiated cases to the NYPD with sufficient time for it to commence and complete its own review of alleged police misconduct; continuing to work with the NYPD to expedite the process for obtaining investigation-related documents from the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau; and reporting in its semiannual Status Reports on the final outcome of its substantiated cases that match or link the cases that the CCRB sends to the NYPD with the NYPD's final actions in each of those cases.

However, the audit still noted concerns that CCRB investigative managers and supervisors did not consistently make a notation entry in the computerized case log to validate that the required periodic reviews were conducted. Therefore, there is no assurance that all cases are undergoing supervisory review at the specified intervals. Moreover, the CCRB has still not developed more realistic indicators to define the backlog of cases.

The Comptroller recommends that the CCRB improve access to the NYPD database, remind investigative supervisors and managers about the time-triggered review procedures or retrain them in these procedures, and consider adding an indicator to the Complaint Tracking System (CTS) database that could be used to indicate the completion of supervisory case reviews at specified intervals.

In response to the report findings CCRB stated: "The CCRB concurs with the audit conclusion that 'the CCRB has shown marked improvement in its ability to manage its caseload in a timely and efficient manner'. . . .The CCRB also believes that our improvement was and is in part dependent upon the CCRB's ability to obtain records and other information more expeditiously from the New York City Police Department."

The CCRB was created in 1993 by the City Council and is comprised of 13 members who oversee the investigations of civilian complaints against New York City police officers. The CCRB is empowered to receive, investigate, hear, make findings, and recommend action on complaints against members of the NYPD that allege misconduct involving excessive or unnecessary force, abuse of authority, discourtesy or use of offensive language. While the CCRB can make recommendations for disciplinary action, the Police Commissioner has the sole responsibility for discipline within NYPD.

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