The NYPD Internal Affairs department, which is entrusted with investigating police corruption, has failed to adequately police the police, according to several law enforcement experts, prosecutors, and current and former members of Internal Affairs. A damning article in today's Times begins by pointing out that all the recent corruption allegations and indictments in the NYPD have one thing in common: none of the investigations began with Internal Affairs.
This spate of unrelated corruption prosecutions, and what some see as the Internal Affairs Bureau’s spotty record of uncovering major cases involving crooked officers, raise questions about the department’s ability to police itself, said nearly a dozen current and former prosecutors who have handled corruption cases, as well as some current and former Internal Affairs supervisors and investigators.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly defended Internal Affairs, insisting that its ranks had swelled and more money has been thrown at it, currently $66 million, up from $41 million in 2001. But funding doesn't seem to be the problem, rather the division's "hidebound" bureaucracy and inertia. "We don’t have anything proactive where we can sit there and think like cops and track corruption," a former Internal Affairs investigator tells the Times. "There is no real detective work going on. Everything in I.A.B. is all reactive."
The article is chock full of dismaying observations about the NYPD's seemingly intractable corruption. For instance, did you know there is a city agency charged with investigating Internal Affairs? It's called the Commission to Combat Police Corruption, and it boasts a staff of five, a minuscule budget, no subpoena power, and is staffed entirely of people appointed by a mayor who has shown zero interest in tackling police corruption.
