The sun was starting to dip below the horizon after a beautiful and warm day in one upstate New York city. Frederick Farwell, 44, was coasting on his bike toward a Syracuse bus stop to get home after wrapping up work on a July day.Farwell was crossing the intersection between Tallman and Rich Street when out of nowhere a Syracuse Police Department vehicle slammed into him, according to court documents.Did the cop have his lights on? Was the siren going? Police and witnesses disagreed. Court documents said that Farwell was left semi-conscious, having landed feet away from where he was initially struck. He suffered life-altering head trauma, broken bones and other injuries from the crash.But, in the end, the 2017 collision was determined to be the cyclist’s fault, according to court documents obtained in a wide-ranging investigation of New York police vehicle crashes from the USA TODAY Network-New York, Syracuse University and Central Current.The officer who hit Farwell, Gregory DiPuccio, had already been disciplined twice by the department in the preceding year after collisions with two other civilian vehicles, according to Syracuse Police records. The documentation on one of these incidents, from 2016, says that DiPuccio did not operate his vehicle in a “careful and prudent manner.” The collisions caused over $6,000 in damages to Syracuse Police vehicles, and further unknown sums for the other parties involved. DiPuccio claims he checked to make sure the intersection was clear before driving through.Josh Gillette, a lawyer who worked on part of the Farwell case, said the officer’s driving choices made the intersection a dangerous challenge. “If you’d slow down as soon as it was necessary for safe operation, you would have seen the person coming on a bike,” Gillette said.What happens when a driver hits a cyclist but he’s a cop?In the resulting lawsuit, Farwell’s team settled with the city for $700,000. It’s unclear what led Farwell and his legal team to that decision, and his attorney at that time, Robert Lahm, could not be reached for further comment after repeated attempts. The outcome of this case raises larger questions, such as whether police can skirt around the responsibility, and potential consequences, a civilian driver would usually bear for hitting a bicyclist or pedestrian while operating a motor vehicle.  The answer, in many cases, is yes they can, given something called “qualified immunity,” which allows officers to break traffic rules during emergency situations and provides them with broad liability protection in those situations, should they be legally pursued.  This immunity, coupled with the lack of serious internal discipline for most officers involved in vehicle crashes, may contribute to officers facing few if any consequences for multiple crashes on their records. “It’s unfortunate, because qualified immunity was there to protect officers that make honest mistakes,” said Chris Mercado, a former New York Police Department officer who is now an adjunct law professor at St. John’s University and City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “With some departments….the culture within that department permits them to say, ‘Well, you know, as long as I was…trying to do the right thing,’” Mercado said. “Even if they are a little overzealous, or they erroneously interpret something. As long as it was a ‘good faith effort,’ they’re covered.”DiPuccio’s driving record on duty throws into question whether the Syracuse Police Department’s discipline approach deters repeat crashes among its officers. And Dipuccio is not the only officer to have been involved in repeated police vehicle crashes in Syracuse, or in New York, in recent years.A cadet in the Southern Tier Law Enforcement Academy weaves through this portion of the skills course held their skills driving course at the National Soaring Museum in Elmira. Credit: Tina MacIntyre-Yee | Rochester Democrat and ChronicleJoseph Cecile, chief of the Syracuse Police Department, said efforts are underway to combat these issues through a combination of corrective discipline, enhanced training and amendments to policies and procedures, among other measures.  How many police officers get into multiple crashes in NY? In the decade leading up to our records request, 237 Syracuse Police officers were disciplined in connection with police vehicle crashes, department data show — and 69 of those officers were disciplined for multiple crashes during 2013 to 2022.Further, hundreds of other police crashes occurred in Syracuse during this time, for which the officers involved faced no discipline at all. There are currently 384 officers in the department, not including chiefs, sergeants and lieutenants.In total, crashes among Syracuse officers during this period cost the department millions of dollars in SPD vehicle damages, repairs and court settlements — and much of this cost burden was borne by Syracuse taxpayers. According to Cecile, the department’s efforts to address the prevalence of crashes resulted in a reported 65% reduction in vehicle crashes from 2023 to 2024. According to Cecile’s emailed statement, SPD had 48 officer crashes between January and May of last year. In contrast, the department saw only 17 crashes involving officers from the beginning of 2024 to late May, he said.The data behind these numbers came from the department’s traffic division, which, when asked for the source data, declined to provide it to the USA TODAY Network without a public records request.  But officers have racked up crashes, and damage costs, in the years preceding this effort, without serious consequences.For example, a current Syracuse officer, William Coleman, has been involved in 12 crashes since 2009, according to police records. Coleman’s accidents have cost over $50,000 in damages to Syracuse Police vehicles, as well as unknown monetary damage to civilian vehicles or property, street signs and other roadway barriers. Coleman was involved in three preventable accidents in 2011 alone. The most serious consequence for these three incidents was a written reprimand. Coleman has the most crashes on record when compared to all other Syracuse officers employed since 2009, according to Syracuse Police data.  Another SPD officer, Colin Mahar, was involved in five avoidable crashes between 2013 and 2022, according to department records. One of the more serious instances occurred on January 31, 2019, which caused over $3,500 in damages to Mahar’s car, and severe damage to the other car. Notably, in all five of Mahar’s collisions during this period, a final decision on discipline took at least a month, with some cases taking up to five or six months. For example, Mahar received discipline for his first crash three months after his second crash occurred.  This delay in response time is common among Syracuse Police accident investigations and raises the question of whether investigative lag time hinders the department’s ability to efficiently address officers’ driving problems. Chief Cecile noted that “all accidents are different and with varying complexities, which means some take longer to investigate and therefore longer to render a decision on discipline.” The USA TODAY Network-New York has sent over 500 Freedom of Information Law requests to every police agency in New York to understand further the trend of vehicle crashes among police officers. Hundreds of departments have yet to respond to those requests. About 100 miles west, in Rochester, 12 officers have been involved in three or more avoidable crashes per person in the same time period, based on Rochester Police data. Those 12 officers were responsible for 43 avoidable crashes that amounted to nearly $200,000 in damages. Nine of them received charges or discipline for their actions.  Officer William J. Wagner, for example, was involved in at least four avoidable crashes during his time on the force, costing the department nearly $30,000 and including a string of two avoidable crashes over three months. Rochester Police Department has not yet provided records detailing these crashes and how they occurred.  Some of the officers with repeated crashes on their record no longer serve in the field because of discipline tied to non-vehicle related incidents.Daniel Celiberti was recently placed on administrative assignment for his involvement in the death of 46-year-old Rochester resident Todd Novick in December 2023. The Rochester officer was involved in four avoidable accidents between 2014 and 2019, including a massive crash that cost the department nearly $19,000 in 2015.    Repeat crashes: What’s behind the problem?  Lenient discipline policies could contribute to a pattern of accidents among officers who feel they can get away with crashes without serious career consequences. Syracuse Police’s “discipline schedule” for crashes is based on the amount of damage sustained by the police vehicles. Every accident that costs the department under $1,500 is met with a written reprimand. Incidents that cost between $2,000 and $4,500 are met with the loss of two furlough days, or vacation days.  It’s important to note that this scale doesn’t take into account the compounding financial or societal damage of an officer getting into multiple crashes. Based on these metrics, an officer could hypothetically get into a dozen crashes, even those that cause death or injury to civilians, without receiving more than a written reprimand. The current Syracuse disciplinary schedule feels “narrowly scripted,” Mercado, of John Jay College, said. In reference to the DiPuccio case, Mercado feels that you have to “look at the totality of the damage, (and) if a person was significantly injured.”  Syracuse Police’s Cecile says he has taken steps to go beyond the standard disciplinary schedule in several cases of repeated crashes among officers.  “We have come up with a procedure that allows for discipline beyond any contractual constraints,” Cecile said.This procedure, however, relies on a subjective evaluation of the conduct, rather than a clearly defined policy – and is not codified in the department’s discipline schedule. For example, Coleman, the Syracuse officer with 12 crashes on record, was barred from driving department vehicles twice in the past 10 years. The decisions appear to have happened informally, according to Coleman’s record — the department did not provide documentation of Coleman’s driving privileges being revoked when asked via two separate public records requests. Mercado believes that discipline outside of a codified policy is risky, he said.  “It is much more robust” to have a schedule that has “no ambiguity in sentencing, discipline, (or) messaging guidelines,” he said. “It puts people out as on the same page […] everyone knows what’s expected of them and what’s protected.” After the USA TODAY Network-New York reporters questioned Syracuse Police last year about the prevalence of crashes in their ranks, the department imposed its first ever five-day unpaid suspension on an officer following a vehicle crash.   Cecile said he believes the actions taken by the department have begun to address and mitigate motor vehicle incidents. Extra discipline measures are only taken when the offense is “egregious,” he added, but did not define exactly what that meant, or what kind of consequence the measures would impose. Although these new measures may aid in stopping repeat offenders, they are not guaranteed to be shared with the public, nor can the public expect to know how they are being enforced or whether they are working. Ten miles away, in the Town of Camillus, the police department’s disciplinary approach to officer-involved vehicle crashes takes a wider variety of factors into account.  The department did not see officers repeatedly crash cars between 2013 to 2022, according to Camillus Police Department records. Camillus factors the cost of damages into disciplinary action after car crashes, but also injuries, damages to other property and vehicles, and, notably, the officer’s previous “safe driving record.” Camillus provided its entire discipline policy to the USA TODAY Network for review.  Michael Schreyer, the chief of the Camillus Police Department, said the department’s track record boils down to proactive measures holding officers accountable to ensure safe decisions behind the wheel.  Schreyer, who has served with the town since 2007, credited this strategy with minimizing reckless crashes within the town’s borders, because officers know that a bad track record leads to more severe and burdensome discipline.   He added that the long-practiced approach ensures that any consequence “wasn’t a surprise to the officer. It’s a standard.” The department has also increased the number of hours and the rigor of driving training required of each officer, he said. Because of these factors, Schreyer feels his officers are more prepared behind the wheel than many other departments across the state.  “Our hope is that if we provide this training and knowledge up front, that we are not going to have to get to the discipline,” he said.  However, the problem seen in Syracuse and Rochester is still a relevant issue in smaller cities, like Troy. Troy, located just north of Albany, has a population of 50,000.  One of Troy’s police officers, Samantha Rivet, was involved in five accidents between January of 2019 and August of 2022, according to accident records provided by the department.  In 2020, Rivet was responding to an emergency call, those records state. After Rivet left the car to address the emergency situation, the vehicle “proceeded to back northwesterly out of the lot, entered the eastbound lane of Hoosick Street, turn itself striking [another officer’s car] before leaving the south side of the roadway, striking a wooden fence.”  Troy did not provide its departmental disciplinary policies for motor vehicle accidents in response to the USA TODAY Network-New York’s public records request, so it is not possible to tell how seriously Rivet was disciplined.  Rivet’s collisions resulted in damage to two other police cars. No details have been provided about the financial cost of Rivet’s crashes. The prevalence of these incidents across cities and towns of vastly different populations in New York demonstrates the problem is not related to one community or department.  Transparency among police departments remains an issue — those working to minimize police vehicle crashes often hit “the big blue wall,” said Gillette, the attorney in the Farwell case. But charting a path to effective discipline for officers from the top down is key to moving toward a solution, said Mercado, of John Jay College. “If they have a clear message from their rules, their lieutenants, and their commanding officers, I believe that that’s the message they will carry with them on patrol,” he said.— Finn Lincoln is a 2024 intern for USA TODAY Network-New York, focusing on police discipline and open records. He will be expanding the published network database of FOIL records and explaining findings to readers. Lincoln is a senior journalism student at Syracuse University, studying news journalism and European history. On his way to New York state from his hometown of Cleveland, Lincoln always makes time for a stop in Buffalo for wings at Anchor Bar. Reach him at [email protected] Force is a police accountability project meant to expose and document the prevalence of police vehicle accidents in New York.This joint investigation between USA TODAY Network-New York and Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. That project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University-Medill.This reporting was completed in partnership with The Central Current, a Syracuse-based nonprofit newsroom.Reporters, visual journalists, editors, designers and project partners include Maria Birnell, Evan Butow, Kayla Canne, Daniel DeLoach, Jamie Germano, Anna Ginelli, Jon Glass, Seth Harrison, Nausheen Husain, Hayden Kim, Chris Libonati, Finn Lincoln, Beryl Lipton, Tina MacIntyre-Yee, Laura Nichols, Peter Pietrangelo, William Ramsey, David Robinson, Kyle Slagle, Eden Stratton, Sarah Taddeo, Jodi Upton and Marili Vaca.The post Dozens of NY police officers have crashed their cars repeatedly. Nothing’s stopping them appeared first on Central Current.