The Mollen Commission is formally known as The City of New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department. Former judge Milton Mollen was appointed in June 1992 by then
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
mayor
David N. Dinkins
David Norman Dinkins (July 10, 1927 – November 23, 2020) was an American politician, lawyer, and author who served as the 106th mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993. He was the first African American to hold the office.
Before enteri ...
to investigate
corruption in the New York City Police Department. Mollen's mandate was to examine and investigate "the nature and extent of corruption in the Department; evaluate the department's procedures for preventing and detecting that corruption; and recommend changes and improvements to those procedures".
Members
In June 1992, Mayor Dinkins appointed five members to serve on the Mollen Commission :
* Milton Mollen, Chair
*
Harold R. Tyler, Jr., Commissioner
* Harold Baer, Jr., Commissioner
* Herbert Evans, Commissioner
* Betsy Barros, Commissioner
Commission's work and findings
In December 1993, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that the "special mayoral panel asserted ... that the New York City Police Department had failed at every level to uproot corruption and had instead tolerated a culture that fostered misconduct and concealed lawlessness by police officers."
Mollen issued a report in July 1994. The conclusion:
Today's corruption is not the corruption of Knapp Commission
The Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption (known informally as the Knapp Commission, after its chairman Whitman Knapp) was a five-member panel initially formed in April 1970 by Mayor John V. Lindsay to investigate corruption withi ...
days. Corruption then was largely a corruption of accommodation, of criminals and police officers giving and taking bribes, buying and selling protection. Corruption was, in its essence, consensual. Today's corruption is characterized by brutality, theft, abuse of authority, and active police criminality.
The Mollen Commission transcripts and videotapes are housed in the Special Collections of the
Lloyd Sealy Library
The Lloyd George Sealy Library is the campus library at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY). Located in Haaren Hall, the library specializes in criminal justice-related materials.
Overview
The Lloyd Sealy Li ...
,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice (John Jay) is a public college focused on criminal justice and located in New York City. It is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY). John Jay was founded as the only liberal arts c ...
.
See also
*
Frank Serpico
Francesco Vincent Serpico (born April 14, 1936) is an American retired New York Police Department detective, best known for whistleblowing on police corruption. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was a plainclothes police officer working in B ...
*
Knapp Commission
The Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption (known informally as the Knapp Commission, after its chairman Whitman Knapp) was a five-member panel initially formed in April 1970 by Mayor John V. Lindsay to investigate corruption withi ...
*
Amadou Diallo
In the early hours of February 4, 1999, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean student named Amadou Diallo (born September 2, 1975) was fired upon with 41 rounds and shot a total of 19 times by four New York City Police Department plainclothes office ...
*
Abner Louima
Abner Louima (born November 24, 1966 in Thomassin, Haiti) is a Haitian American man who, in 1997, was physically attacked, brutalized, and raped by officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after he was arrested outside a Brooklyn n ...
*
Michael Dowd (police officer)
Michael F. Dowd (born January 10, 1961) is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, drug distributor, and criminal associate of the Diaz organization who was arrested in 1992 for running a drug ring out of Suffolk County, Long ...
*
New York City Police Department corruption and misconduct
Throughout the history of the New York City Police Department, numerous instances of corruption and misconduct, and allegations of such, have occurred. Over 12,000 cases have resulted in lawsuit settlements totaling over $400 million during a ...
References
External links
The Mollen Commission report(Large PDF file: 13.5 Mb – 270 pp.)
Mollen Commission Proceedings collection finding aid collection located a
Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections John Jay College of Criminal Justice (view on appointment)
{{New York City Police Department
New York City Police Department corruption and misconduct