NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban bypasses CCRB, gives deputy chief a pass for roughing up protester

NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban declined to discipline a high-ranking deputy chief accused of pulling a female protester’s hair and shoving her face into the ground in downtown Manhattan in 2020, records show.

Caban’s decision came in October in the case of Deputy Chief Gerard Dowling of the NYPD’s Special Operations Bureau. Caban’s decision was included near the bottom of an oversight report made public last week by the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Caban elected to remove Dowling’s case from CCRB jurisdiction and decide on his own whether to discipline him. It was one of 11 cases Caban “retained” in the last three months of 2023.

Under a 2012 memorandum of understanding between the Police Department and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, police commissioners are allowed to retain cases if submitting them to CCRB examination would be “detrimental” to the NYPD’s disciplinary process, or if the officer has no disciplinary history or prior substantiated complaints.

Of the 11 cases Cabain retained late in 2023, he issued no discipline in four and minor discipline ranging from training to one lost vacation day in the other seven.

Advocates for police accountability scored Caban’s decision in the Dowling case.

“We long have objected to the NYPD’s authority to unilaterally close cases where the CCRB has found misconduct, and this case perfectly illustrates that concern,” said Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

“When disciplinary cases of high-level officers simply disappear, that destroys the notion of police accountability,” Dunn said.

Dowling was cleared of punishment in the case, which began with a protest June 2, 2020, outside 17 Battery Place in the Financial District, across from Battery Park.

NYPD officers and supervisors including Dowling, Inspector James McGeown and Capt. Ronald Ramos tried to disperse the group with kicks and baton strikes, the CCRB found. The encounter generated a series of civilian complaints.

When a woman tried to intervene in the melee, Dowling grabbed her hair by the braid and with two other officers pulled her down, according the CCRB’s findings and a video of the incident.

The woman “landed face down on the ground,” the CCRB findings say. Other officers placed flex cuffs on her wrist, the findings show.

In an interview with CCRB after he viewed the video, Dowling acknowledged he had grabbed the woman’s hair but said it was unintentional.

The CCRB substantiated the two improper use of force allegations against Dowling. “Substantiated” means the CCRB found “sufficient credible evidence to believe that the subject officer committed the alleged act without legal justification.”

Deputy Chief Anthony Marino, an aide to Caban, wrote CCRB Director Jonathan Darche on Oct. 31 that the force Dowling used in the situation was “reasonable and necessary to overcome resistance to arrest.”

Marino noted that Dowling has never been disciplined in 28 years on the job. “The police commissioner intends to take no disciplinary action against (Dowling),” Marino wrote.

Darche replied Nov. 9, arguing the CCRB should be allowed to pursue charges against Dowling.

“(The woman) was in custody, on the ground surrounded by officers, and posed no physical threat to the officers nor was she a threat to escape custody,” he wrote. “Dowling was not justified in using force against her and should be held accountable for this misconduct.”

Marino was unmoved in his reply Nov. 16, repeating that Dowling would not be disciplined for the incident.

Dowling was one of two dozen police supervisors named as defendants in a landmark class action lawsuit filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society over the NYPD’s handling of the 2020 George Floyd protests. The city settled the case in July for $13.6 million.

Dowling was also named as a defendant in at least five other civil rights lawsuits since 2019 related to actions during protests. The city settled three of those lawsuits for a total of $276,501, records show.

In one of those settled cases, Alyssa Sukhana named Dowling in her 2021 suit over a May 25, 2020, Bronx protest where people were “kettled,” or violently hemmed in by hundreds of cops. Dowling, the lawsuit alleged, had a key role in planning the police response to the protest. The lawsuit settled for $78,500, records show.

Christophe Bensmaine named Dowling in his lawsuit over a May 30, 2020, protest in Times Square as a commander of cops who injured him during the event. The city settled that case for $167,500.

In the third settled case, Christina Gavin named Dowling in her 2020 lawsuit as one of the cops who grabbed her and kicked her legs out from under her during a protest on 125th Street in Harlem on Nov 22, 2019. She alleged Dowling made false statements in the case. That case settled for $30,501.

Records show Dowling has been named in 14 CCRB complaints, including seven involving use of force. The only two cases substantiated involved the June 2, 2020, incident.

Dowling joined the NYPD in 1995. He was promoted from inspector to deputy chief by then Commissioner Dermot Shea in October 2021 after those lawsuits had been filed.

The CCRB has objected to the practice of letting a police commissioner retain some disciplinary cases.

“The CCRB stands by all its disciplinary recommendations and believes that due process is best served by the disciplinary process,” said CCRB spokeswoman Clio Calvo-Platero.

“When the commissioner retains a case, we lay out the facts and explain the board’s reasoning as clearly as possible. Under the current disciplinary system, this is all that the CCRB can do in these matters.”

As the No. 2 in Special Operations to Chief Wilson Aramboles, Dowling helps oversee the emergency services, aviation, harbor, and mounted units and the Strategic Response Group, which responds to large scale events.

On Monday, the CCRB issued its annual report for 2023, which showed that 5,550 complaints were filed in the year, a 50% jump over 2022 and the highest total in a decade. Complaints containing an allegation of an improper stop and frisk rose from 522 to 940, an 80% spike.

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