Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll see how loose rules enable the State Police to hand out lax punishments for misconduct. We’ll also find out about 92 new places where you can read The New York Times for free.
Who polices the police?
That is the underlying question in a series by The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. The latest installment found that officers with the New York State Police who had committed serious misconduct — settling personal scores or having sex while they were on duty, for example — largely remained on the job. The penalties they were given rarely went beyond suspensions without pay, sometimes of only a few days.
Unlike other large police agencies in New York State, the State Police don’t have explicit disciplinary guidelines for officers who commit offenses like those. Most of the other departments, including the New York Police Department, operate under rules or regulations that outline specific punishments — including, in some cases, firing — for these kinds of offenses.
Dozens of officers remained on the job after committing serious misconduct between 2014 and 2024, according to thousands of State Police files obtained by The Times and the nonprofit newsroom New York Focus. Some had neglected their duties. Some had lied in police reports. Some had failed to call for medical help when doing so would have been appropriate.
Some of the cases were investigated by an internal affairs office called the Professional Standards Bureau, but discipline was inconsistent. A trooper who had sex while on duty was suspended without pay for eight days. Two years earlier, he had been caught taking lewd photos of himself while in uniform.
Two other troopers who also had sex on duty were given suspensions of 45 and 90 days without pay, even though they had relatively cleaner disciplinary histories.
‘People see that their colleagues aren’t being punished’
Suat Cubukcu, a professor of criminal justice at Towson University who studies discipline in large law enforcement agencies, said that unevenly applied punishments could lead to more bad behavior. “People see that their colleagues aren’t being punished,” he said.
The standards bureau investigates complaints that it considers serious, according to the State Police website, but delegates those of a “routine nature” to commanders who resolve them through short conversations with troopers. But in the absence of disciplinary guidelines, the standards bureau’s decisions about which complaints are serious and which are minor are subjective.
A trooper who stunned a suspect with a Taser and then held the trigger for 33 seconds, more than twice the length of time that is considered dangerous and potentially fatal, was not investigated by the bureau. His commander concluded that the trooper’s actions had been “excessive,” writing in the disciplinary file that the trooper needed to be “cognizant” of his actions. “Handling a Taser requires your complete attention,” the commander wrote.
The trooper lost one vacation day.
A system that has resisted change
There have been repeated calls to overhaul the way the State Police handles problems involving its own. As early as 1997, a special prosecutor recommended that the Professional Standards Bureau investigate all cases of serious misconduct.
But the disciplinary system has gone largely unchanged. In 2020, when the State Legislature enacted a number of police reform laws following the murder of George Floyd by an officer in Minneapolis, the State Police was excluded from most of the changes. It took issue in court with one of the few that did apply: the repeal of a 1976 law that kept officers’ disciplinary records secret.
The New York Police Department made most of its files public in 2021. But despite a court order, the State Police has yet to release its entire body of misconduct files. (The Times and New York Focus obtained thousands of these files from county district attorneys’ offices.)
Beau Duffy, a director of public information with the State Police, wrote in a statement that “allegations involving serious misconduct are thoroughly investigated” and that the agency began developing a formal disciplinary model in 2025. It is not yet complete.
Weather
At least today will be mostly sunny. The brutal, bitter cold will continue. Temperatures won’t go above the low 20s. Expect a mostly clear night with a low around 5.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for snow removal.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I don’t view this as anybody’s fault. I just view it as snow.” — Brian Gesiak, who used his own shovel to clear a corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, after city plows pushed the snow to the edge of the street, blocking the crosswalk.
The latest New York news
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Proposed date for Mangione’s trial: Manhattan prosecutors proposed scheduling Luigi Mangione’s murder trial for July, two months ahead of a parallel federal proceeding.
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Former Adams aide accused of taking diamond earrings: Prosecutors said Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the former chief adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, took bribes in return for pressuring city regulators to approve building projects despite safety concerns.
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New York sues a solar panel firm: The city says customers did not receive the energy savings advertised by the company, Radiant Solar. Sometimes Radiant Solar’s panels did not work at all.
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Epstein files release: The Justice Department now expects to finish its review of files related to Jeffrey Epstein “in the near term,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in court filings. She did not give a specific date.
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Was she held captive? Diana Multare, a 91-year-old woman with a failing memory, moved into a $28,000-a-month assisted living facility on the Upper West Side. She didn’t like it, but the staff wouldn’t let her leave.
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Anti-ICE protest in Manhattan: Dozens of protesters condemning the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown were arrested after occupying the lobby of a hotel in TriBeCa, where, they said, federal immigration agents were staying.
Unlimited access to The Times at branch libraries
There are 92 new and very New York places to read New York Today and everything else from The New York Times: the 88 branches of the New York Public Library and its four research libraries.
Starting today, the library is providing free, unlimited access to The Times online. Library users can connect their phones or laptops to library Wi-Fi — no library card required — and go to The Times’s app or website. Or they can use a library computer, but they will need a library card to log on.
The access to The Times includes the news report, Cooking, Games, The Athletic and Wirecutter, along with the archive of articles going back to The Times’s first issue, in 1851. The Times’s Chinese and Spanish editions are also be available.
The branch libraries — in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island — receive print copies of The Times, but digital access has been somewhat limited. Readers could look up articles on the ProQuest database. Andy Wright, a senior vice president and head of global institutional subscriptions for The Times, said the arrangement with the libraries signaled a continuing effort by The Times “to find new opportunities to get our journalism and products in front of even more people.”
The arrangement will also help the library address the digital divide in New York City. Many people depend on branch libraries for digital service, librarians say. Roughly 30 percent of the households in the city lack mobile and home broadband service, and 5 percent of households don’t have any computing devices.
Brian Bannon, the chief librarian, said that making The Times available online would provide “an important practical tool” for users — from high school students writing papers to authors “doing hard-core research” — and for librarians.
“Some people come in and say, ‘Hey, I heard something on the news last week,’ and they want to know more about that,” he said. “This gives branch librarians a way to redirect them — they can look up something for them, open the article and orient them to using The Times’s website.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Traffic jam no. 2
Dear Diary:
I was running late. I was just stepping out of my hotel on the Upper East Side and had 15 minutes to meet a friend in Midtown. With no time for makeup, I must have looked a like a complete mess.
It was a bitterly cold afternoon. Rush-hour traffic had Fifth Avenue gridlocked, and my bus was nowhere in sight. Gripping my collar, I began to sprint south.
Luckily I was only a few minutes late in arriving, but my face was numb and red from the icy wind.
“What blush are you wearing?” my friend said when she saw me. “That shade looks amazing!”
I blinked.
“I think it’s called Fifth Avenue Traffic Jam!” I said.
— Levi Jiang
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Slaps on the Wrist for State Troopers in Misconduct Cases appeared first on New York Times.
