Complaints Don't Matter

Especially if you're NYPD officer Sgt. Carlos Fabara:

"He racked up more civilian complaints than any other cop in the NYPD last year - but he has yet to face anything more severe than a letter of reprimand and several lost vacation days.

"Thirteen complaints were filed against NYPD Sgt. Carlos Fabara during the 12 months ended July 1, 2006, according to Civilian Complaint Review Board records obtained by the Daily News.

"Only about 10% of the city's cops get even a single complaint over the course of a year - so Fabara holds a dubious distinction."

But notice the tone of the next passage in the same NY News article:

"His record reads as a kind of Rorschach test on the NYPD: He can be seen as a good, tough cop, a vital soldier in the city's constant battle against crime - or an aggressor who oversteps his authority.

"The 31-year-old sergeant is a decorated cop credited with 123 arrests as an officer and another 185 as an anti-crime sergeant. But he has been repeatedly flagged for alleged stop-and-frisk violations and search abuses."

Rorschach test indeed. But the rubric that the News uses is flawed. His record doesn't read on the NYPD in general, but on the particular policy of "stop and frisk" (the policy that he's specifically charged with abusing) a policy that the News admits (at the end of the article) is used primarily against blacks and Hispanics:

"Civil rights advocates have criticized the NYPD for searching more than a half-million people last year, saying the tactics amount to harassment and racial profiling. An analysis by The News found that 78% of the people stopped by cops assigned to precincts were black or Hispanic."

So what is the News really saying when they call Officer Fabera a "Rorschach Test"? Surely they can't mean that the general population debates over the validity of Fabera's conduct, but rather that Fabera represents the significant racial division in NYPD policy that still dominates their image. Furthermore, by not representing it that way does as much of a disservice to New York as the NYPD does by not disciplining Fabera for his violations. Of course, to discipline him would be to criticize their own policy, a policy that the NYPD strongly defends. Until this Catch-22 is addressed you will continuously get charges of racism leveled against the NYPD regardless of the validity of the complaints.