Loose Rules Let New York State Police Hand Out Lax Penalties for Serious Misconduct

Loose Rules Let New York State Police Hand Out Lax Penalties for Serious Misconduct

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An investigator with the New York State Police helped get a friend’s traffic tickets reduced “in exchange” for her sexually explicit photos, according to a disciplinary letter from 2017.
Another stunned a combative suspect with his Taser in 2020 and held down the trigger for 33 seconds, twice the amount of time widely considered dangerous and potentially fatal.
Some officers with the agency neglected their duties; others had sex while on duty. Some used their badges to elicit favors; others to settle personal scores. Some failed to call for medical aid when needed; others lied in police reports.
The circumstances of any case of officer misconduct vary. Still, most large police agencies in New York State thoroughly outline steps to be taken in their investigative processes and have
explicit disciplinary guidelines
that recommend specific punishments — in some cases, even firing — for these types of offenses.
But the State Police, New York’s second-biggest law enforcement agency, has no such formal disciplinary guidelines. How a misconduct complaint is investigated, and any resulting discipline, is discretionary. All of these officers remained on the job.
The New York Times and
New York Focus
, a nonprofit newsroom, obtained through records requests thousands of State Police disciplinary files dating back to 1998. For the most part, the files do not include cases of officers committing crimes, which are generally investigated by prosecutors. But they do include confirmed cases of misconduct handled by the agency itself.
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