Kudos to Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell for putting her stamp on the NYPD’s internal discipline procedures. She has every reason to rethink policy left over from the de Blasio era when progressives judged every cop guilty.
As The Post’s Craig McCarthy reported this week, the commish in an internal memo announced that in at least 72 cases she’d reduced or dismissed penalties recommended by department “judges” or (more often) by the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
More, she intends to “amend” the “disciplinary matrix” she inherited, including the current up to 10 days of discipline for failing to hand out a business card.
What is she supposed to do when she determines some recommended punishments are “manifestly unfair to the officers under review,” as her memo notes, for example when “bad intent to officers was imputed when none was present”?
Especially when the CCRB is widely seen as institutionally over-influenced by cop-hating “advocates”?
Commissioner Sewell intends to “amend” the “disciplinary matrix” she inherited from the de Blasio era. Alec Tabak
Nor is she abandoning the “matrix,” created under former PC Dermot Shea to end the too-often-inconsistent way internal discipline had been imposed.
Indeed, she made it clear she has no intention of whitewashing anything: “Members of the service who engage in misconduct make all of your jobs much more difficult,” she noted. “Make no mistake, I will not hesitate to take appropriate disciplinary action against those who engage in misconduct of any nature.”
It’s her job to hold cops to account — and also to stand up for those who’d otherwise be treated unfairly. That she’s forthright about it simply means she’s the stand-up NYPD leader New Yorkers need.
