Inspector General, a Year in, on Measuring Police Oversight (Capital New York)
Capital New York, May 28, 2015
Inspector General, a Year in, on Measuring Police Oversight
A year ago this week, Philip Eure walked into his office on Maiden Lane and made history, as New York City’s first ever Inspector General for the New York Police Department….A year later, experts are still debating how to measure the inspector general’s effect on police policy. At a panel discussion inside the New York City Bar’s Midtown office last week, Eure was still fine-tuning his answer, when asked what metric the public could use to gauge whether his office is succeeding. Eure said counting the number of meritorious lawsuits filed in court and the number of civilian complaints, along with public opinion polls about the NYPD, were all broadly useful yardsticks to measure how the police—and by extension, police oversight agencies—were performing. In terms of specific yardsticks for an office like his, Eure said the public should count the number of policy recommendations made by his office that eventually become adopted.
