Eric Umansky is a deputy managing editor of ProPublica, where he has overseen two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. Most recently, a series he edited on NYPD abuse of “nuisance abatement” laws won the Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service. Umansky oversaw much of ProPublica's Trump administration coverage, including the Trump, Inc. podcast with WNYC, which won a DuPont Award. More recently, Umansky has reported with his colleagues on police accountability in New York City. The work has won the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting and the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting. It has also been credited with helping spur reforms.
Umansky joined ProPublica back when it started in 2008. Before that, he wrote a column for Slate. Umansky has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others. He is also a co-founder of Document Cloud.
Why are so many people now embracing demagogues? Barbara Walter, political scientist and author of “How Civil Wars Start,” tells ProPublica that the vital signs of healthy democracy are in decline around the world.
Civilian investigators found that officers engaged in serious misconduct, including hitting one boy with a car, pointing a gun at another and wrongly arresting three teens. Then the NYPD intervened.
A New York state judge said the NYPD was operating in “bad faith” when it denied requests to release body-worn camera footage from the killing of Kawaski Trawick.
The inspector general for the NYPD concludes, as ProPublica has detailed, that the police aren’t giving civilian investigators full access to body-worn camera footage.
New York City’s police oversight agency brought disciplinary charges against the officer who killed Kawaski Trawick. While the NYPD found no wrongdoing, ProPublica published footage showing it was the cops who escalated the situation.
To understand why police are so rarely held accountable for killings, you should know about Kawaski Trawick, and what didn’t happen to the officer who shot him.
Last week ProPublica cited epidemiologists saying New York was “crazy” to keep closing schools over two unlinked positive cases. This week, the city ended the rule.
Many New York City public schools have been repeatedly closed because of two positive COVID-19 tests, even without evidence of in-school spread. Experts call it “crazy.” And it’s driving me nuts.
After ProPublica detailed the lack of disclosure about protest cases by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, the agency has revealed how little progress has been made on many of the investigations.
Emails show New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board leaders discouraged staff from confronting the NYPD about a lack of cooperation on abuse investigations. The agency declined to disclose how many officers are facing misconduct charges.
On Tuesday, the 2nd Circuit rejected unions’ appeal to keep NYPD discipline records secret. ProPublica published thousands of those files last year. “The cat is not only out of the bag, it’s running around the streets,” one judge noted then.
The council has announced a package of bills to reshape the NYPD and improve officer accountability. A City Council member cited a “direct line” from ProPublica’s coverage to the proposals.
The comments were captured in body-worn camera footage the NYPD recently disclosed, 20 months after Kawaski Trawick was shot in his apartment while holding a bread knife.
Recently released documents show that NYPD commissioners have used their authority to reject the civilian review board’s recommendations and even guilty pleas from officers themselves.
While a civilian board can prosecute misconduct cases involving NYPD officers, the police commissioner has the final word. Frequently, that power is used to reduce penalties.
Trawick was alone in his apartment when an officer pushed open the door. He was holding a bread knife and a stick. “Why are you in my home?” he asked. He never got an answer.
Footage shows the killing of the 32-year-old Black man in his home by a white officer — over the objections of his Black, more-experienced partner. Both officers are still on duty.
The NYPD has regularly failed to turn over key records and videos to police abuse investigators at New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board. “This just seems like contempt,” said the now-retired judge who ordered the NYPD to use body cameras.
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