Will the NYPD officers involved in aggressive arrest be penalized?

On Wednesday evening, a passerby filmed a particularly forceful and aggressive arrest of a young black man after he was allegedly spotted smoking marijuana in a Brooklyn park. 

The videos of the arrest, which have been widely circulated online, have sparked outrage and called the officers’ use of force into question – but it’s unlikely that they’ll face any serious ramifications such as suspension or termination. 

I’m walking home from work and this undercover cop was holding this man. The guy asked for the cop to identify himself, he ignore that. He asked what crime he commit, he ignore that too. I pulled out my phone. You can hear the guy screaming “I never thought it would happen to me” pic.twitter.com/YW2dI3g8fk

— Velvet (@TheVelvetRope__) March 5, 2020

In the videos, 20-year-old Fitzroy Gayle can be seen being detained by a plainclothes officer whom Gayle repeatedly asks why he was stopped while holding his hands in the air. The officer speaks on his radio, possibly calling for backup. Then several other New York Police Department officers run over to the officer and Gayle – who is still being detained – and wrestle the suspect to the ground while he screams for help. “Officer, please!” Gayle yells. “I am not resisting! I am not resisting!”

Six officers appear to pile onto Gayle, kicking him and stomping on his legs, while he wails in pain and calls out to onlookers for help to protect him from the officers. “Why’d you have to stomp on him like that?” asks an offscreen passerby, who is met with no response.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said during a press conference on Thursday that Gayle and another individual fled the park in Canarsie after they were approached by officers while smoking marijuana. The officers were responding to a gunshot alert but neither of the men are believed to have been involved with the gunfire. Gayle was arrested for marijuana possession – even though the NYPD has been directed not to arrest New Yorkers for smoking marijuana, absent some aggravating factor – resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration, according to The New York Times. The other man was issued a summons.

Shea acknowledged that the video of the arrest had some "disturbing points" and said that the department would be conducting an internal investigation. The commissioner also suggested that Gayle should not have run from the officers. "I would like to see approach, discussion, and no running," he said. "No physical resistance at all. The problem is you can’t go back in time." 

Civil rights activist Rev. Kevin McCall told the Times that Gayle’s family is now calling upon Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez to investigate the officers involved in Gayle’s arrest. McCall also said that he thinks Shea should suspend the officers. 

“We are aware of the concerns regarding this arrest and will be reviewing the incident,” A spokesperson for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office told City & State.

NYPD officers, however, rarely face legal or professional penalties for their actions, so it's unlikely that anything will come of the department’s internal review – or Gonzalez’s, although he has charged officers with crimes in the past. (In fact, the only person to arguably face criminal charges stemming from the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man put in a chokehold by cops, was the bystander who filmed it and claims he was subsequently subjected to a campaign of targeted harassment by the NYPD.) 

Nor do officers involved in the beating or killing of suspects typically lose their job. The city’s police department is known for continuing to employ officers who have been sued for misconduct dozens of times. A 2018 expose by Buzzfeed found hundreds of instances of officers who the department found had committed fireable offenses but kept their jobs.

The unions representing NYPD officers have consistently defended cops accused of brutality, and they sometimes react with furious anger to criticism from City Hall. The largest police union encouraged a work-slowdown, resulting in a temporary decrease in arrests, to protest the firing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo in 2019, five years after Pantaleo was filmed putting Garner in a chokehold that contributed to his death. 

In 2019, the city paid $68.7 million in settlements to those who alleged they were victims of police wrongdoing, the New York Post reported. Lawsuits that are settled out of court, however, are not included in the city’s data, so these numbers aren’t an entirely accurate reflection of what the city has spent on settlements.

A settlement isn’t necessarily proof that an officer did anything wrong, but critics of the department have taken issue with the city’s massive NYPD payouts and have argued that they could be curtailed if the department focused more on its officers’ behavior. 

"These numbers (settlement figures) will remain high unless the NYPD seriously revamps its disciplinary process so that officers who engage in this conduct receive more than just a slap on the wrist," Tina Luongo, Attorney-In-Charge of the Criminal Defense Practice at the Legal Aid Society, told Gothamist last year.