NY Post

NEW YORK, NY — Despite a leadership style that has spared Mayor Bloomberg the scorn heaped on his predecessor for aggressive police tactics, the NYPD was hit with more allegations of wrongdoing in the last two years than at any time during the Rudy Giuliani years, a Post analysis has found.

“Giuliani had a reputation for being real hard, but the data belie that,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College. “The data seem to suggest that despite the conventional wisdom, Giuliani's cops were less complained about than Bloomberg's.”

‘ROUGHEST’ FINEST – Gripes Soar Under Mike

NY Post

NEW YORK, NY — Despite a leadership style that has spared Mayor Bloomberg the scorn heaped on his predecessor for aggressive police tactics, the NYPD was hit with more allegations of wrongdoing in the last two years than at any time during the Rudy Giuliani years, a Post analysis has found.

“Giuliani had a reputation for being real hard, but the data belie that,” said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College. “The data seem to suggest that despite the conventional wisdom, Giuliani’s cops were less complained about than Bloomberg’s.”

Last year, the NYPD was named in 5,634 notices of claim, paperwork that individuals must file with a court before they sue a city agency. That’s a 19 percent increase from 2001 – Giuliani’s last year in office – when 4,740 notices were filed, according to data kept by the city comptroller.

The trend mirrors a similar rise in the number of grievances filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent panel that probes reports of rudeness, brutality and abuse of authority by police. The 13-year-old board recorded a record number of complaints in each of the last three years.

In 2006, the board received 7,669 complaints containing a total of 25,452 allegations. It investigated 10,673 of those allegations, finding wrongdoing in 867 instances.

Civil-rights advocates attribute much of the rise in police complaints to aggressive law-enforcement tactics championed by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, especially a five-fold explosion in the number of random pedestrians stopped, questioned and frisked by police. Some 508,540 people were subjected to such stops in 2006, up from 97,296 in 2002.

Critics like New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman say the practice smacks of racial profiling and brings too many innocent people in contact with police. But an NYPD-commissioned study released by the RAND Corp. defended the practice.

“There are real reasons why complaint numbers would be up,” Lieberman said. “Nobody doesn’t know somebody who was stopped and frisked and questioned by the police.”

Charges of civil rights violations accounted for the largest increase in notices of claim filed since 2001, rising 79 percent. The CCRB also traces part of its record workload to the city’s public service hotline, 311, which, since 2003, has made it easier to levy grievances.

Law Department spokeswoman Laura Postiglione said the city paid out $40.4 million for lawsuits against the department in 2006, down from a high of $58.2 million in 2004.

“We’ve worked very hard as a Law Department and with the police to bring our settlements down,” Postiglione said. “That’s really a barometer for what’s happening in the community.”