The New York City police department’s disciplinary issues are coming to a head during the third year of tough-on-crime Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, with complaints at their highest since 2012, stop-and-frisk encounters soaring and displays of impunity by rank-and-file officers, according to interviews and data from the city’s independent police watchdog agency. Disciplinary records and interviews with sources also reveal a persistent problem with instances of NYPD officers wearing morale patches on their bulletproof vests containing possible white supremacist imagery. This is an uncomfortable echo of four years ago, when the NYPD’s riot squad pummeled protesters and cops openly wore pro-Trump imagery , flashed white supremacist symbols while on duty, and were discovered in membership lists of extremist militias.
The first public clue of the NYPD’s renewed problem with far-right imagery emerged in the civilian complaint review board’s (CCRB) May monthly report . In December 2022, two officers from Staten Island’s 120th precinct responded to a fight between parents at a public school. One cop refused to provide his name to one of the mothers who also observed a patch with a skull image on the other cop’s bulletproof vests.
“The skull patch on subject officer 2’s uniform was a specific imagery commonly used by white supremacist groups. Subject officer 2 stated that the patch was a gift, and the skull insignia did not have offensive connotations. The inv.