Chairman Richard Emery may be gone, but that doesn’t end the Civilian Complaint Review Board’s problems. So says the head of the captains unions, and he’s right.
What’s wrong goes far beyond the top — bad as Mayor de Blasio’s picks have been.
Emery’s real flaw was his inherent conflict of interest: His law firm was bringing police abuses cases before the board. And as The Post recently reported, CCRB director Mina Malik is herself a walking conflict of interest, with close ties to anti-cop lawyers.
But Roy Richter, president of the the Captains Endowment Association, argues that the CCRB itself is “broken,” as its officials live in an “alternate universe.”
It presumes police abuse is ongoing and systemic — an assumption that’s led the CCRB to overcharge and overpenalize.
In an interview over the weekend, Richter noted the case of two Brooklyn cops who last fall recovered a firearm while pursuing a suspect, then got a search warrant and recovered another firearm, arresting two people in the process.
The DA and a judge signed off on the warrant, yet the CCRB charged the cops with a bad search and seizure and made them undergo retraining.
Cops have to do their jobs with a federal monitor, a City Council-imposed inspector general and the CCRB all constantly second-guessing them. We’re all for getting tough with bad cops — but these watchdogs instead are busy presuming all officers are guilty until proven innocent.