NYPD to require officers to report every time they use force

Ciara McCarthy in New York
Thursday 1 October 2015 21.15 BST

New York City police on Thursday announced a new policy requiring officers to report nearly every time they use force, shortly after a watchdog condemned the department’s inability to track such instances and its failure to discipline officers who used excessive force.

“NYPD was living a little bit in the dark ages,” said Philip Eure, the New York police inspector general, as he released an investigative report about the department.

The report stated that the NYPD had no standardized method of reporting or tracking the use of force throughout the department. The findings detailed a litany of New York City’s bad policing practices with regard to use of force, citing problems with officer training and policies intended to de-escalate situations.

Investigators reviewed 104 substantiated allegations of unwarranted force from the past five years and found that the commissioner had failed to discipline officers in 36% of those cases.

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