Michael Gerber
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.”
Official transcript of the Public Safety Committee's oversight hearing on NYPD officer discipline and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, where members questioned NYPD officials about deaths in custody.
Why we used this label
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.