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Is it any surprise that, " Almost Every NYPD Cop Charged with Excessive Force During the George Floyd Protests Escaped Serious Punishment?"

The state of policing in the United States is that the cops corrupting their own is the rule, and not the exception: 

Ten minutes after the city’s emergency curfew kicked in on a sunny evening five years ago, NYPD detective Jason Ragoo stood over a female protester he had just taken to the ground on West Street in Lower Manhattan.

As the woman covered her head and bent her knees in a fetal position, Ragoo gripped his baton like a battering ram, swung his arms back, and jabbed the end of the nightstick into her ribs, video of the incident newly obtained by THE CITY shows.

It was one of scores of incidents involving local police and demonstrators at the height of protests prompted by George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police that prompted more than a thousand complaints of excessive force to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates police misconduct. 

The outcome of the case involving Ragoo is reflective of a pattern in which the most serious uses of force by police officers during the protests — even those that sparked outrage and calls for “defunding” the police — were often met with little to no discipline from the NYPD.

In the aftermath, Ragoo was issued “instructions” by the department on proper procedures, a low level of discipline that’s mirrored across dozens of similar cases.

Of the 1,052 excessive force complaints fielded by CCRB investigators during the 2020 protests, the board concluded that 66 involved force that was improper, excessive or unnecessary enough for the NYPD to administer the most severe level of discipline, which at minimum calls for the loss of 11 vacation days.

 So, is this typical?

Yes it is:

………

The stiffest penalty in the 66 cases was issued to Officer Brian Mahon, who the CCRB found had in one incident improperly shoved two protesters and hit two others with a baton, and then gave misleading statements about it to board investigators. In a plea deal reached under former NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, Mahon agreed to a year’s probation and the loss of 40 vacation days.

Last year, as soon as his probationary period ended, Mahon was promoted to detective. He couldn’t be reached for comment and no one responded to a voicemail left with his union. 

………

But the aggressiveness of the police response spurred three investigations by government entities, dozens of civil lawsuits that cost the city tens of millions of dollars in settlements, and a finding by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch that, during the NYPD’s mass arrest of protesters in The Bronx, the department had violated international human rights laws.

There needs to be a way to fix the problem that police often more like a criminal gang covering for each other than they do peace officers.