How Williams is still on the force, much less getting promotions should be a red flag to everyone.
He is a terrible cop.
BASED ON A history of official complaints and lawsuits naming him, Williams may be a prime example of where to start. Over the course of Williams’s 18-year career with the NYPD, 60 complaints, involving 21 separate incidents, were lodged against him with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates NYPD misconduct complaints, according to records obtained via a public records request following the recent repeal of 50-a, a controversial law that shielded officers’ misconduct records from public view. For comparison, 41 percent of current NYPD service members have never had a complaint lodged against them, according to the CCRB’s 2018 annual report. Twenty-one percent have had only one complaint, 3 percent have had five, while 9 percent have more than six.
Between 2008 and 2018, there were 11 lawsuits that named Williams (usually including other officers) alleging police misconduct like excessive force and wrongful arrest, according to CAPstat, a project that tracks NYPD misconduct claims. Williams has been accused four times of anally penetrating a suspect, according to CCRB complaints reviewed by The Intercept, as well as a federal lawsuit reported on by The Appeal. In a 2017 trial, Allen’s attorneys asked Williams if that conduct had earned him the nickname of “assman” in the neighborhood. Williams admitted that people call him “assman,” but disputed the moniker’s origins, The Appeal reported, citing court records. As recently as last year, he was accused in a CCRB complaint of using a chokehold during an arrest; that practice has been under intense scrutiny in New York since the 2014 killing of Eric Garner, yet it was not until last month that Cuomo signed a bill banning it.
In a complaint stemming from a May 2019 incident, a man claimed that, after walking away from Williams and his partner, Williams said, “Why is that guy always walking away from us. The next time I catch him I’m going to slam him on the ground and plant everything I find on him.”
Williams was never disciplined, received 13 pay raises and a big promotion.
SICK.
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