Michael Gerber is a New York lawyer and former federal prosecutor who became the New York City Police Department's Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters, the department's general counsel overseeing its Legal Bureau and License Division, in April 2023. He previously spent nine years in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he led the Violent and Organized Crime Unit and co-led the Narcotics Unit, and was later a partner at Lankler, Siffert & Wohl LLP. He clerked for Justice David H. Souter and Judge Pierre N. Leval and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Case
Six people died after medical emergencies in NYPD custody in 2026. Public defenders blame systemic neglect; the NYPD says it investigates every death and most detainees were seen by doctors first.
Role at the time: NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters, at a City Council Public Safety Committee hearing
Statement summary
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber told the City Council that any death in police custody is a tragedy but does not mean that the officers who responded or held the person necessarily did something wrong.
“The fact that someone dies any time-- any time someone dies in police custody that is a tragedy. It does not mean that the officers who responded or who had the person in custody necessarily did something wrong.”
The reference point is whether the NYPD and the city are failing people who fall ill in police custody. Gerber calls any death in custody a tragedy but says it "does not mean that the officers who responded or who had the person in custody necessarily did something wrong." That defends officers' handling of people in custody against the inference that the deaths show failure, so we labeled it Defended or excused. The closest competing label is Mixed or conditional, which would fit an acknowledgment of problems alongside the defense; he describes no failures.
Statement dates: September 22, 2025
Statement dates: September 22, 2025
Statement dates: September 22, 2025
Statement dates: September 22, 2025
