Brianna Villafane was in Lower Manhattan protesting police violence in the summer of 2020 when one officer gripped her hair and yanked her to the ground. The New York City civilian oversight agency that examines allegations of police abuse investigated and concluded that the officer had engaged in such serious misconduct that it could constitute a crime. The next step would be a disciplinary trial overseen by the New York Police Department, during which prosecutors from the oversight agency would present evidence and question the officer in a public forum. Then last fall, the police commissioner intervened. Exercising a little-known authority called “retention,” the commissioner, Edward Caban, ensured the case would never go to trial, ProPublica reports. Instead, Caban reached his own conclusion. He decided that it “would be detrimental to the Police Department’s disciplinary process” to pursue administrative charges against the officer, Gerard Dowling. The force that the officer used against Villafane was “reasonable and necessary.” The commissioner ordered no discipline.
His case is one of dozens in which Caban has used the powers of his office to intervene in disciplinary cases against officers who were found by the oversight agency to have committed misconduct. Since becoming commissioner last July, he has short-circuited cases involving officers accused of wantonly using chokeholds, deploying Tasers and beating protesters with batons. New York’s police commissioner has the final say over officer discipline. Commissioners can and often do overrule civilian oversight boards. But Caban’s actions stand out for ending cases before the public disciplinary process plays out. Retention has been the commissioner’s chief method of intervention. He has prevented the cases of 54 officers from going to trial in his roughly one year in office according to an analysis of CCRB data. In 40% of the cases, he ordered no discipline. In the cases in which he has, it has mostly been light, such as the loss of a few vacation days. The most severe punishment, ProPublica found, was docking an officer 10 vacation days for knocking a cellphone out of the hand of someone who was recording him.