Police make an arrest in Manhattan.
Photograph by Dean Moses
The Police Benevolent Affiliation (PBA) despatched an inside memo out to its some 21,000 members this week, obtained by New York News, calling on the Civilian Grievance Overview Board (CCRB) to oust one in all its personal investigators whom the union has dubbed a “flagrant anti-police activist.”
The calls for made in a Jan. 13 letter that referred to Andrew Battle, a CCRB investigator whom the union believes is unfairly biased towards NYPD officers. The CCRB is tasked with independently investigating misconduct allegations towards cops, in addition to making findings and recommending disciplinary and authorized actions towards them if discovered liable.
Nevertheless, based on the PBA memo that New York News obtained and reviewed, the union claims its members received’t obtain a good shake from the panel primarily based on Battle’s findings. It blamed the CCRB for commissioning these with an agenda to take down police. In response, the PBA despatched a letter to the police watchdog demanding Battle’s dismissal.
“In a letter sent to CCRB leadership last week, the PBA made clear that CCRB’s hiring and continued employment of this investigator constituted a breach of the New York City Charter, which required CCRB to conduct its investigations ‘fairly and independently.’ We demanded the investigator’s immediate removal as well as a comprehensive overhaul of the agency’s hiring process,” a part of the interior PBA memo learn.
The PBA accuses Battle of violating the CCRB’s code of conduct by overtly writing and publishing anti-police rhetoric, which they are saying showcases a bias that may forestall the investigator from treating officers pretty.
As proof for Battle’s alleged bias, the PBA pointed to an article printed in The Indypendent in December of 2019, authored by Battle, titled “Police won’t fix NYC’s Subway.” Within the piece, Battle appeared to label police as racists and bullies.
“It has become clear what police do. They intimidate, bully, harass. They target people of color for special abuse. They stare at riders with dull, detached eyes. They collect overtime. Their stretches of boredom are punctuated by outbursts of aggression, of brutality. A teenager is tased over a $2.75 fare. A homeless man is accosted, thrown out of the station,” Battle wrote.
In one other article dated September 2022 titled, “Back to the Future: On Eric Adams’s New York” for the Brooklyn Rail, Battle once more appeared to match the NYPD to a road gang.
“The modus operandi of the street gang. The informal culture of the NYPD is full of expressions of this rank-and-file autonomy, from challenge coins to the upside-down New York City flag stickers that some officers affix to their work vehicles,” Battle wrote. “For eons, extortion, violence, and everyday humiliation have been normal features of the relationship between the police and Black people in American cities.”
Sources throughout the CCRB responded to those claims, telling New York News that CCRB staff bear a Division of Investigation background evaluate earlier than being employed. The CCRB sources say that no single individual decides in an investigation; every case entails a number of layers of evaluate.
Additionally they acknowledged that CCRB workers bear particular coaching to conduct investigations impartially, charging that claims of bias are flatly false.
However, a spokesperson for the CCRB confirmed to New York News that the company acquired the PBA’s letter and is taking the declare severely.
“The CCRB is an oversight Agency, and as such, it takes complaints of bias by its staff extremely seriously. The CCRB received the PBA’s complaint regarding an employee, and it is conducting an investigation,” a spokesperson mentioned.
The CCRB acknowledged that Battle himself is unavailable for remark.
PBA president Patrick Hendry.Photograph by Dean Moses
After studying of the letter despatched to the CCRB, New York News additionally reached out to PBA President Patrick Hendry for remark. The union boss charged that Battles’ “bias is on another level.”
“Police officers already know that the CCRB system is stacked against them, but this investigator’s outrageous bias is on another level. There is zero chance that an individual who has publicly expressed such extreme anti-police views is going to conduct a fair and impartial investigation, as required by the City Charter,” Hendry mentioned. “He should never have been hired. CCRB must not only remove him, but must also reform its vetting and hiring processes so our members are not subjected to this kind of hateful bias.”
It isn’t the primary time the PBA has laid declare to a CCRB member holding prejudice towards cops.
In one other inside memo dated April 2025, within the members-only part of their web site, the PBA claimed to have pushed out some 4 CCRB members, together with a supervisor, they are saying, who added extra complaints to an officer’s file.
“After an investigation into the supervisor’s background, we found that this staffer was not only living in New Jersey (a violation of city rules unless an employee is granted a waiver) but had also publicly espoused extremist views, including support for terrorism and endorsements of political violence,” the memo learn.
