M.K. Kaishian, Senior Policy Counsel for the Brooklyn Defender Services, notes that the NYPD itself has the data necessary to identify and remove officers who could be spreading misconduct across the force.

“And yet what happens is the opposite, these clusters of misconduct and abuse are actually protected and further and further entrenched into the NYPD,” she said. “And that’s because they really are emblematic of the NYPD’s culture. They’re not an aberration.”

Even if certain officers form clusters simply because of the nature of their assignments, that, too, should be worrying, Kaishian argued. “That is not a form of policing that we should be tolerant of,” she said. “If they are making so many arrests, and therefore have so many victims, that’s still a problem.”

View full Gothamist article, here.