Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nuñez of the 47th Precinct (left) and Captain Carlos Fabara of the 100th Precinct have more complaints filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board than any other commanding officers. NYPDIn late September, Captain Carlos Fabara became the newest commanding officer for the 100th Precinct in Rockaway, Queens. Like any commanding officer of a “house,” Fabara is the face of his precinct, answering questions from anxious members of the neighborhood at community council meetings, and defending his officers’ work during the weekly CompStat rundown with the NYPD’s top leadership.
Fabara was promoted to this position of power despite having a record that may have prevented managers in other professions from rising through the ranks. Fabara has sustained 57 documented complaints of alleged police misconduct from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent agency that investigates certain kinds of abuse. The complaints were filed well before Fabara was promoted to running a precinct.
That number, accrued over his 21 years on the force—including a stint training police officers—is the highest among the NYPD’s 77 commanding officers, according to CCRB data that was made public this summer by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Eleven of Fabara’s complaints—all falling under the category of abuse of authority—were deemed substantiated, meaning the CCRB determined that wrongdoing had occurred.
"It's a part of the larger problem of the culture of impunity within the NYPD that officers with dozens [of CCRB complaints] can rise up the ranks,” said Molly Griffard, Legal Aid Society Cop Accountability Project legal fellow. “And it certainly sends a message that this kind of misconduct is tolerated and that these complaints are not taken seriously enough."
Fabara racked up 42 of his 57 CCRB complaints while working as a sergeant on the 101st Precinct’s “anti-crime” team in 2005 and 2006—according to the Daily News, Fabara was the NYPD’s most complained-about officer that year.
According to the NYCLU data, Fabara’s 11 substantiated complaints came from five separate incidents, including an incident in September 2005 where he had improperly stopped and searched a 15-year-old boy.
In six of the cases where the CCRB recommended that Fabara should be charged by the NYPD, the police department declined to prosecute. Instead, the NYPD determined that any discipline would be handled by Fabara’s commanding officer.
For three other substantiated complaints against Fabara, the CCRB recommended that they be addressed to his superior, which the police commissioner upheld. After Fabara was found to have improperly questioned someone in August of 2014, Fabara received instructions.
One current NYPD officer who ran a command in the Bronx several years ago said police chiefs considering promotions do take CCRB complaints into consideration, though it’s just one factor in their decision-making. In some cases, police executives prioritize what they feel are the needs of a house, whether it’s a community-minded leader, an aggressive crimefighter, or efficient administrator.
“I've seen guys with very bad histories who are two- or three-star [chiefs] today,” said the former commanding officer. "Because you have a lot doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be dead in the water."
At the same time, the former commander said, “You got to lead by example. How does someone tell you or correct you to keep CCRBs down...when he’s notoriously himself accruing them? It’s kind of hard.”
The NYPD declined to make Fabara available for an interview.
Fabara is not the only commanding officer with a long history of complaints. Trailing behind him is Deputy Inspector Osvaldo Nuñez, leader of the 47th Precinct in the Bronx, with 50 CCRB complaints throughout his 24 years on the force.
Nuñez was also promoted despite being named in two misconduct lawsuits that cost taxpayers more than $400,000. And over the three years Nuñez led the 114th Precinct in Astoria, the number of CCRB complaints lodged against his officers rose 156%.
Only one CCRB complaint against Nuñez was deemed “substantiated.” In January 2001, investigators determined that Nuñez, who was four years into his career at the NYPD as an officer at the 30th Precinct in Upper Manhattan, beat a 33-year-old Hispanic man with his radio.
The CCRB recommended his case go before the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Trials, and he was found not guilty in the resulting administrative hearing.
In 23 other cases, the complaints against Nuñez were unsubstantiated, meaning there was not enough evidence to prove that the incident did or did not occur. The majority of complaints made to the CCRB go “unsubstantiated,” for reasons that include poor investigations, a lack of compliance from witnesses, and NYPD stonewalling
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Among Nuñez’s unsubstantiated cases: an incident where he allegedly strip-searched a man in 2002; another where he was accused of pepper spraying a man while serving as a sergeant in the Bronx’s 44th Precinct in 2007; and one case where he allegedly abused his authority by threatening a woman with arrest while serving as an executive officer in the 42nd Precinct in September 2014. By that point, Nuñez already had the rank of captain, though he was not officially in command of the precinct.
In another 18 complaints lodged against Nuñez, the CCRB “exonerated” him, meaning that they determined that his conduct was allowed under NYPD guidelines.
Former NYPD officers and commanding officers who spoke to Gothamist said that an officer’s CCRB record was not an important factor in deciding whether they should run a stationhouse. The former officers asked for anonymity so they could speak candidly about the internal workings of the NYPD.
"If the department had any kind of problem with him or others like him, they would put their careers in a box," one now-retired supervising officer said of Nuñez.
Nuñez, who has commanded the Bronx’s 47th Precinct since October, declined to comment for this story.
What is far more important than a CCRB record, according to this former commander, is an officer’s so-called Career Profile Index, the equivalent to a work history report, where points are assigned to you for any internal infraction, alleged or confirmed. Points are assigned to officers for any infractions that could range from CCRB complaints, low arrest numbers, or any probes by the Internal Affairs Bureau. The totality of an officer’s work history, not CCRB complaints, are then factored into whether to advance an officer.
"If that's their kind of attitude and orientation towards civilian complaints, I don't think it's a surprise then that officers who have complaint histories don't really suffer any adverse employment consequences,” said Darius Charney, executive director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented plaintiffs in the landmark stop-and-frisk litigation against the NYPD.
“I think it's really a department-wide problem,” Charney continued. “And I think there's many of us in the civil rights and police accountability community who have long been very frustrated by the NYPD’s unwillingness, not only to hold officers accountable, but just their unwillingness to really take the CCRB process, the complaint process, seriously.”
Augie Aloia, a professor of criminal justice at Monroe College and a former NYPD sergeant, defended the promotions of officers with high numbers of CCRB complaints, particularly when an allegation is never substantiated.
“The more active or proactive—or if cops make a lot of arrests—they're going to have more interaction with the public,” Aloia said. “And the more interaction with the public, statistically, you're going to get complaints.”
According to the NYCLU’s records, the average number of total CCRB complaints among commanding officers is 9. Ten other officers currently running a command have sustained 20 or more CCRB complaints over their careers. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea sustained a single CCRB complaint while he was a uniformed officer.
Nuñez’s predecessor at the 114th Precinct in Queens, Captain Peter Fortune, has not had a single CCRB complaint lodged against him. Under the entirety of his 29-month tenure at the precinct, from May 2015 until September 2017, there were 65 CCRB complaints made against his officers. Under Nuñez’s command—which lasted for 25 months—there were 167.
As CCRB complaints rose in the 114th Precinct under Nuñez’s command, officers also conducted more police stops. In 2019, for instance, the number of stop and frisk encounters increased under Nuñez’s command, with data from the NYPD showing the 114th Precinct led with the most stop and frisk encounters than any other precinct in Queens, with 242 stops. The year before, the number had been 182.
Crime statistics from the 114th Precinct don’t show a drastic difference between the tenures of Fortune and Nuñez; major felonies saw a small increase under Nuñez, but misdemeanors slightly decreased.
The first lawsuit Nuñez was named in had stemmed from an incident that happened in Harlem’s 33rd Precinct in 2010, when officers assigned to the precinct allegedly beat several Black men in an aggressive stop and frisk encounter at a barbecue. One of the officers reportedly busted a man’s lip, beating him with a baton and pepper spraying him before being hauled off to jail.
The second incident happened in the Bronx’s 44th Precinct, where officers broke down the door to a basement apartment, allegedly shoving a gun in the face of the occupants before taking them to the station house. While there, one of the men was forced to take his clothes off, squat, and cough to determine if they were concealing contraband. Nothing was found.
In both instances, Nuñez was part of the executive leadership for each precinct. The city settled the 2011 case for $90,000; the 2012 case for $324,000.
The Captains Endowment Association, the union representing commanding officers, did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement provided by the NYPD, the department said it does consider an officer’s CCRB complaint history and “a member’s adherence to any penalties imposed in the very few cases that are actually substantiated.” It also considers civil suits, especially if an officer was the subject of a lawsuit or is “merely named as a defendant which is generally the cases, as well as, if any wrongdoing was found on the part of the officer, which is generally not the case.”
The NYPD said they also consider an officer’s “record of fighting crime and providing safety in the neighborhoods they serve.”
The department insisted that officers are also “continuously evaluated,” not only through the number of CCRB complaints but whether they’re the subject of an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation, borough investigations, and in the crosshairs of command integrity control officers.
“I think that the problem is the culture,” said Maryanne Kaishian, an attorney with Brooklyn Defenders. “The people who are behaving violently and abusively against the people of New York are the culture of the NYPD. So, it's not that they don't fit in or that they're anomalies. They're rising through the ranks, and they're setting the tone for the entire department. And they're being rewarded for the exact type of policing that leads to people filing these complaints.”