After angering New York Police Department officials by criticizing delays in handing over evidence in a fatal police shooting and for requesting a larger budget and more power to investigate police misconduct, the interim chair of New York City's independent police oversight panel will step down, the New York Times reports. Three sources told the Times that Mayor Eric Adams, a former NYPD official himself, asked Arva Rice to quit the role he had appointed her to in February 2022 at the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Rice, who is also president and chief executive of the New York Urban League, criticized police for failing to hand over evidence in a timely manner in the fatal police shooting of Kawaski Trawick, a 32-year old man from the Bronx who was killed in his apartment in 2019 after officers say he jumped at them with a knife. Speaking at a board meeting last week, Rice said the police waited 18 months to turn over body camera footage. The delay caused the board’s investigation to exceed the review board’s own statute of limitations — which made it more difficult for the board to recommend that the officers be charged with misconduct. Over the past two years, Rice has also called for more funding. In budget testimony before the City Council last month, Rice asked for $13 million more than the year before and $15 million above what the administration proposed.
Rice was also pushing for changes to a state law that prevented the board from accessing body camera footage and other police records in some cases that had been sealed. Maya Wiley, a former mayoral candidate and the former chairwoman of the C.C.R.B., said Rice’s removal was troubling. “Every single indicator is that she is not toeing the line,” Wiley said, “and that line is protecting the Police Department.”