Facing pressure to implement campaign promises designed to reshape policing in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday will name Jennifer Jones Austin, the head of an influential anti-poverty organization and an informal adviser, to head the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent police oversight agency.
Ms. Jones Austin, a lawyer and one of the city’s most respected Black leaders, is a veteran of civic leadership and city government, with stints in the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations. The daughter of a civil-rights leader and a survivor of leukemia that is most likely related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she has spent her career fighting for policy changes to benefit the poor and disenfranchised.
Among her many roles, she has served as president of the Board of Correction and deputy commissioner for the Administration for Children’s Services, chaired the New York City Racial Justice Commission and was part of the leadership team at the New York attorney general’s civil rights division that investigated the New York Police Department’s use of stop and frisk following the death of Amadou Diallo.
“Jennifer Jones Austin has spent her career standing with New Yorkers too long shut out of the halls of power. She understands that public safety and accountability go hand in hand, and that trust must be earned through action,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement. “Jennifer will lead the C.C.R.B. with integrity, compassion and an unwavering commitment to justice.”
It is unclear how the mayor’s supporters on the left — unhappy that he retained Jessica Tisch, a billionaire heiress, as police commissioner — will respond to Ms. Jones Austin, who is not a democratic socialist, as the mayor is. Still, the idea that someone who serves as the vice chairwoman of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network would lead the C.C.R.B. would have seemed far-fetched two decades ago.
Ms. Jones Austin comes to the role at a critical juncture in the mayor’s early tenure. On the campaign trail, Mr. Mamdani supported the idea of giving the C.C.R.B. final say on police discipline but has since pulled back. The police commissioner currently gets the final say, and Ms. Tisch, who has kept crime low and has the support of the city’s business leaders, wants to maintain that power.
A independent federal monitor that oversees the city’s landmark stop-and-frisk settlement said earlier this year that officers are still underreporting and performing unconstitutional stop-and-frisk interactions and that “little to no discipline is imposed on officers, supervisors or command staff.”
In an interview, Ms. Jones Austin, currently the chief executive of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, said she understood that she was stepping into a role laden with tensions. She said that she sees fairness and justice as the guideposts of her career, and vowed that she would try to ensure that both the Police Department and the C.C.R.B. are accountable to city residents.
“I’m going to come to this role with an understanding: The N.Y.P.D. is not racist,” she said. “But as is the case in every government, we have to understand and appreciate that bias and racism have had a place in all of these systems.”
She added, “And my responsibility, with that knowledge and understanding, is to essentially judge cases on the facts and the merits, not to come with foregone conclusions.”
The mayor also faces other critical choices around policing that could increase scrutiny of C.C.R.B. decisions. Mr. Mamdani has yet to fulfill some campaign promises such as disbanding the Strategic Response Group, a police unit used at protests that has faced accusations of brutality, and eliminating a database of people suspected of being gang members.
Mr. Mamdani was lightly criticized in a rare display of disapproval from the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America after it emerged that he planned to increase the Police Department’s head count by 580 officers. He has since rescinded the increase.
The mayor was also criticized for establishing a watered-down version of the Department of Community Safety that would divert some 911 calls to mental health experts and social workers.
Ms. Jones Austin inherits a board that for years has been at loggerheads with the city’s police unions, which have sought to roll back the agency’s influence. The Police Benevolent Association has criticized the C.C.R.B. for not doing enough to weed out false complaints against its members, noting that even unsubstantiated complaints remain on an officer’s public record.
The acrimonious relationship between the union and the board came to a head in November when the former chairman, Dr. Mohammad Khalid, resigned following a wave of attacks from the union. Dr. Khalid said Patrick Hendry, president of the association, had “pushed me to the brink.”
The 15-member board has the power to investigate complaints against officers accused of abusing their authority, using offensive language, being discourteous or using excessive or unnecessary force. Based on its findings, it will recommend discipline to the police commissioner. In the most serious of cases, board prosecutors can bring administrative charges against an officer and present their evidence at a Police Department trial.
But carrying out these tasks in a timely fashion has been challenging.
Last year, the board received about 5,600 complaints against police officers and found reason to investigate roughly 2,100 of them. About half of those investigations resulted in disciplinary recommendations. It took an average of about 430 days to close every complaint that was fully investigated, “the fastest average time” in the last five years, according to testimony from Jonathan Darche, the board’s executive director, during a City Council hearing in March.
During her tenure, Ms. Tisch, a known disciplinarian, has shown a willingness to work with the board. In March, she told members of the City Council that she changed Police Department policy to ensure that complaints against officers were not dismissed on technicalities, and would continue to work “collaboratively and fairly” with the agency.
Ms. Jones Austin said she has been impressed with Ms. Tisch after hearing her speak about policing, working with the community and engaging with it in a way that garners trust and respect. She said she also hopes to have a trusting and respectful relationship with the police union.
“What I am hopeful for and what I am anticipating,” Ms. Jones Austin said, “is that we will have a mutual respect for one another in our respective roles.”
Ms. Jones Austin’s appointment was praised by Letitia James, the state attorney general; Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney; and Mr. Sharpton.
Ms. James, who worked with Ms. Jones Austin at the attorney general’s office during the stop-and-frisk investigation, said Ms. Jones Austin would bring to the C.C.R.B. the reasoned and factual approach that she took to that investigation.
“It was supported by the evidence and the law,” Ms. James said. “There was no evidence of an anti-police bias.”
Mr. Sharpton has known Ms. Jones Austin since she was a child and worked with her father. He said putting a Black woman in such an influential position would ease some criticism of a dearth of high-ranking Black officials in the administration.
“She’s not anti-police, but she’s not one to ignore police accountability,” Mr. Sharpton said. “She’s not going to get pushed around.”
In a sign of how the left might respond, Chi Ossé, a democratic socialist councilman from Brooklyn and an ally of the mayor, praised Ms. Jones Austin in a statement as having “both the qualifications and moral clarity this moment demands.”
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