Mayor Zohran Mamdani is replacing four of his five appointees on the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency that investigates complaints against NYPD officers and recommends discipline. “Public safety is impossible without accountability,” Mamdani said Monday, amNY reported. The city’s biggest police union is already pushing back.
Out are John Siegal, Pat Smith, Sherene Crawford and Rahul Agarwal, whose terms City Hall says are expiring. In are Reginald Greene, Lisa Hoyes, Lisa Landau and Wesner Pierre. June Northern, appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams, stays on.
Who are Mamdani’s new CCRB members?
- Reginald Greene: a mediator and former Manhattan assistant district attorney and deputy chief who also founded a public school.
- Lisa Hoyes: an NYU Law assistant dean who runs its Public Interest Law Center, and a former federal public defender who spent nearly eight years at the Bronx Defenders.
- Lisa Landau: head of Fordham Law’s Feerick Center for Social Justice and former general counsel at the city health department.
- Wesner Pierre: CEO of Partnership With Children, who built a community violence prevention program at CAMBA.
None of the four is a former police officer. One is a former prosecutor, and one is a former public defender.
Why are police unions upset?
Mostly over Pat Smith, Adams’ interim CCRB chair. PBA President Patrick Hendry called her the only mayoral board member with a voting record fair to police and said the changes will make officers’ jobs harder. The PBA and the Detectives’ Endowment Association have long accused the board of anti-police bias.
The numbers complicate that. The NYPD says it agreed with about 92% of the board’s discipline recommendations this year, up from roughly 84% in 2025 and just 30% in 2024, according to CCRB data.
What does this have to do with Win Rozario?
A lot. Rozario, 19, was fatally shot by police in his Queens home in March 2024 during a mental health call. One of the two officers, Salvatore Alongi, retired with an accidental disability pension before his disciplinary trial, after the NYPD failed to tell the CCRB his retirement was coming. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called it human error and apologized. Mamdani’s package, announced earlier this month along with the first full review of NYPD use-of-force rules in a decade, aims to stop officers from retiring their way out of discipline. Mamdani has stood by Tisch despite calls from some allies to replace her.
The BeezLoop Take
Mamdani campaigned on police accountability, and appointing people who believe in it to the accountability board is exactly what voters were told would happen. That’s not a scandal. The Rozario case shows why it matters: an officer walked away with a disability pension before anyone could judge what he did.
But he should be careful. A board that cops see as stacked against them is easier to ignore, and its recommendations only work if the commissioner follows them. The 92% concurrence rate is the number to watch. If it falls, this was a symbolic win.
The open question: will the NYPD keep following CCRB recommendations at the same rate once Mamdani’s new board starts voting?
Also on BeezLoop: Mamdani’s Oct. 7 statement and the backlash, and an ICE agent fired seven shots into a car in Upper Manhattan.
Sources: amNY · NYC Mayor’s Office · CBS New York (video)
