Hey. I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is EMBEDDED from NPR.

One afternoon in September 2020, police in the city of Yonkers, N.Y., were in a car chase.

MCEVERS: A Black man who they had pulled over, they say, for some traffic violations had sped away when they walked up to his car. So the cops are chasing this man. And eventually, he stops the car again, gets out and starts running. All this is happening in a place called Getty Square. It's in downtown Yonkers. We should say, Yonkers is right outside of New York City. Getty Square, there's a furniture store, a Dunkin Donuts, a Mexican restaurant and some pharmacies. And a lot of buses stop here, so it's busy. There are moms and little kids and older kids after school. And just to be clear, all of this is happening only a few months after a police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).

MCEVERS: And what you're hearing is a video that was taken by someone who was sitting in his car in Getty Square, watching what was happening. You can see the man who cops tried to pull over run into the square with a gun. A uniformed cop comes up behind him and tackles him to the ground. And then...

(SOUNDBITE OF GUN SHOTS FIRING)

MCEVERS: ...The man starts firing.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUN SHOTS FIRING)

MCEVERS: Uniformed and plainclothes cops pile on top of him. They cuff him. And they do not shoot.

(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "LACQUER GROOVE")

MCEVERS: This, of course, is what people want to happen. The police don't shoot. In Yonkers, this is the story the police want to tell, especially after George Floyd. Look at us. Our cops are doing a good job. We should say, the man was later arrested and charged with attempted murder. We tried to talk to him through his lawyer, but he did not respond. Anyway, a few days later, in an auditorium at a public library...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The time is now 6:05. Let me begin.

MCEVERS: Cities around New York state were holding forums like these after George Floyd to give people a chance to talk about their experiences with the police. And at the forum, a few people praised the Yonkers cops for not shooting that man in Getty Square.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I want to start off by acknowledging, first and foremost, the great work of our Yonkers Police Department in the recent event that happened in Getty Square.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I think everyone's seen videos of what happened in Getty Square last week. And that should be noted that that was fine training from the Yonkers Police Department.

MCEVERS: But for a lot of people at the forum, what happened at Getty Square did not change the way they feel about the Yonkers police because this is a police department that has a history of misconduct and alleged brutality, a history that brought in the federal government, the Justice Department, which has been monitoring the Yonkers police for 13 years.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Everybody in the neighborhood is not a suspect. That's the problem we're having.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: We do not want to see police violence because that's what we're seeing.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: It's a rigged system. And until we get to the root of it, all of this is very pretty, but it's not going to go anywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: For 45 years, I've been living in the city of Yonkers. How long is it going to take?

MCEVERS: This is a question people all over the country have been asking.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Say his name.

MCEVERS: There have been calls to abolish the police, defund the police, which, of course, just means reallocate money to service programs, and to reimagine what police even should do. And in a lot of places, like Yonkers, it's about reforming the police. But what even is police reform? And does it work? These are the questions we have spent the last year thinking about in Yonkers, where the police department says it is committed to reform. And it's our show for the next few episodes. In this first episode, we will meet the man who, for the year we were reporting on Yonkers, was the main driver of the reform. And we'll meet someone who's not so sure that this department is able to reform until it reckons with its past. That's all coming up after this break.

MCEVERS: OK. We're back. And when I say we spent the past year thinking about police reform in Yonkers, I mean me and a few other reporters. For this episode, it was me and NPR producer Dan Girma. He lives in New York City. And he'll be telling the story, too.

DAN GIRMA, BYLINE: I'm actually, like, 15 minutes away from Yonkers. We're really close. We're, like, practically neighbors.

MCEVERS: For this episode, we worked with another reporter based in New York City. At the time, she was with the Marshall Project. That's a national news organization that covers criminal justice.

SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM: I'm Simone Weichselbaum. And I'm a longtime police reporter.

MCEVERS: Simone's a national police reporter who started as a local cops reporter.

WEICHSELBAUM: First in Philadelphia, then in New York City for the tabloids, the New York Daily News.

MCEVERS: Simone also calls herself a policing nerd, has a graduate degree in criminology.

GIRMA: It was actually Simone's idea for us to go to Yonkers, first because of this history of police misconduct that brought in the Justice Department.

MCEVERS: And second, the man who was running the Yonkers Police Department at the time was this interesting guy named John Mueller, who was willing to give us a lot of access.

WEICHSELBAUM: So on the surface, Commissioner Mueller is a cop's cop. He speaks like a blue-collar white guy. He curses. But if you dig deeper, he's actually somewhat of a progressive. He seems to really care and really wants to make a difference.

GIRMA: Which made us think, OK, let's go meet this guy...

GIRMA: ...In his office in downtown Yonkers.

WEICHSELBAUM: There he is. Here's our star.

JOHN MUELLER: OK. All right.

GIRMA: Dan. Nice to meet you.

MCEVERS: Hello, Kelly. We Zoomed.

MUELLER: Hey, how are you?

WEICHSELBAUM: I'm not shaking hands.

MUELLER: What up, S-dog? Welcome to Mueller's Magical Mystery Tour.

MCEVERS: If you didn't hear that, he just called Simone S-dog...

MUELLER: Good morning, Aunt Lely.

LELY: How are you doing?

MUELLER: How are we doing?

MCEVERS: ...And then calls his public information officer the Minister of Misinformation.

MUELLER: What do you have for me, Mr. Minister of Misinformation? Yeah, he's just going to glower at you guys. He's a big one for glowering. He likes to glower.

MCEVERS: John Mueller became a cop in the early '90s, first in New York City, then in Yonkers, where he's from - moved up through the ranks.

GIRMA: Remember, the federal government has been monitoring the Yonkers police for 13 years. When they first came in, Mueller was the head of the union for captains, lieutenants and sergeants, and he was not happy about the DOJ.

MCEVERS: He says he had heard about the so-called bad apples in the Yonkers police, and he admits there were times when cops got super physical. But at the time, he says, it was his job to protect cops, not report them.

MUELLER: When you're a union president, you're accountable to your constituencies.

GIRMA: Over time, Mueller changed his mind, started to understand that police should do better. When we asked him why, he said it's partly because he grew up...

GIRMA: ...And because at one point, one of his bosses sent him to a conference run by this police reform organization called PERF.

WEICHSELBAUM: What is PERF? PERF is this organization in D.C. It's a think tank.

MCEVERS: The Police Executive Research Forum.

WEICHSELBAUM: This community of police chiefs who embrace academia and have conferences.

MCEVERS: At Mueller's first PERF conference, he studied the successes and failures of companies, like GE and Kodak. He learned that police should think of themselves as customer service providers.

MUELLER: I think what I got out of it was, wow, we are a profession. It's not just a job. We are a profession.

GIRMA: Since then, Mueller has spent years going to PERF town halls and reading PERF research. So by now, he's what police reporters call PERF-y (ph).

MCEVERS: Which means that by the time Mueller became Yonkers' police commissioner in 2019, he was all on board with the reform. The DOJ was still monitoring the department - he'd inherited that - and there's this long list of reforms he's required to make.

GIRMA: And he's added some of his own stuff, too. So now the Mueller reform plan is part DOJ, part PERF and part him. Just be aware - Mueller likes to use nerdy, PERF-y names for everything.

MCEVERS: He wants his cops to focus only on people they know are committing crimes, not do random stops and searches.

MUELLER: Precision policing is based on the position that the overwhelming majority of people don't commit crime.

GIRMA: He set up a database that records bad behavior by cops and identifies cops who are problematic.

MUELLER: And we're keeping track of officers through early intervention systems.

MCEVERS: And the idea he's obsessed with is this approach to get cops to be less aggressive with people.

MUELLER: I really believe in procedural justice, procedural justice training. I use procedural justice, procedural justice, procedural justice. Procedural justice - are you familiar with that?

MCEVERS: Procedural justice started as a theory. It was developed by professors at Yale Law School and by Chicago police trainers.

GIRMA: After a police officer killed a Black man in Ferguson in 2014 and the protests that followed, the Obama administration pushed and funded procedural justice training for cops around the country.

MCEVERS: The idea of procedural justice is simple. If you train cops to just be respectful to people and to be transparent about why they have stopped someone, good things will come of that.

GIRMA: Simone reported on cops who did procedural justice training in Chicago. And right after we meet Mueller, the two of them get into this big debate about whether it actually works.

WEICHSELBAUM: OK, let me go first.

MUELLER: We at least agree that it was proven to work.

WEICHSELBAUM: My article said it was a mixed bag.

MUELLER: Is that every - all research?

WEICHSELBAUM: So first, what is procedural justice? It's this idea that if you train cops to treat people fairly - like, at a normal interaction, a traffic stop, a pedestrian stop - and sort of build on that foundation, if there's a crime in your neighborhood, you're like, oh, that cop, you know, two weeks ago treated me fairly. I'm going to go help them solve that crime or be a witness in something, and one leads to another. However, what I found in Chicago, that - although they were taught these things, it wasn't, like, digested. So the cops on the street weren't necessarily doing it.

GIRMA: And, Simone says, people weren't helping cops solve crimes.

WEICHSELBAUM: And the cops were complaining, well, they're not helping us solve it. And then the community feels, well, they treat us like shit. We're not going to help you. And it's like the dog chasing its tail.

MUELLER: So I will rebut Simone's point here. The metrics...

MCEVERS: It's not about counting how many crimes people help you solve, Mueller says.

MUELLER: The whole point of procedural justice, for me, is just developing a better relationship with the community. Most people probably have a personal interaction with the police less than five times in their entire life. So we got to make all five of those count. You know, for us, it has to do with, what is the day-to-day interaction? It's those very minor...

WEICHSELBAUM: What's your stat? What's your data point?

MCEVERS: What's your stat? What's your data point? - Simone asks.

WEICHSELBAUM: To measure. So what are you measuring that it's successful?

MUELLER: I haven't measured anything yet.

GIRMA: What Simone wants is evidence. She wants Mueller to show her the data that procedural justice works. Mueller says Yale University researchers are working on this. They eventually surveyed more than 1,400 people in Yonkers to see how they feel about the cops.

MCEVERS: They found there was a high level of trust in the Yonkers police, but that trust was highest among white people and lowest among Black people.

In the end, Simone says, it doesn't really matter what you call a theory or an approach. It's all about finding ways to get cops to be, as they say in reform circles, guardians, not warriors.

WEICHSELBAUM: It's all training cops not to reach for their guns and shoot people when they're angry or fearful. That's the bottom line.

MCEVERS: About 500 of Yonkers' 600 total police officers have taken the one-day, eight-hour procedural justice training course. There was a section on how to become vulnerable and a lot of time talking about the so-called four principles of procedural justice - voice, neutrality, respect and trustworthiness.

GIRMA: At first, we were told that a lot of the cops were like, what is this liberal B.S.? But they eventually warmed up to their trainers, who were all cops themselves.

MCEVERS: There will be more procedural justice training for Yonkers cops. Until then, Mueller knows he has to keep selling the idea.

GIRMA: One thing he does is something he calls a fireside chat, where he and his two deputies call in a handful of cops of different ranks - they're all on the clock - to just sit down and talk.

MUELLER: So I just want to introduce so you know everybody. So that's Eddie, Tom, Zach, Ashley, Chris and Pete.

GIRMA: One evening, we sit in on a chat in a conference room at headquarters. Everyone's in uniform, but it's not too formal. They're eating Italian takeout. There's baked ziti, antipasto, some cookies for dessert. And Mueller's joking about a time he ran into a fellow officer while on vacation.

MUELLER: I'm in the water. I'm on, like, my seventh Corona...

GIRMA: They're all laughing and relaxed. Once they get settled, one of Mueller's deputies tells the cops how they'll be starting these new foot patrols, like old-school beat cops.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #1: Not enforcement. Not looking for metrics. Not go out there, write tickets, hammer people. It's engagement. Go down there. Talk to the community. Be a presence. Be positive. Be visible. Let them feel safe.

GIRMA: In other words, procedural justice. Mueller assures the cops that if you got to enforce, you've got to enforce.

MUELLER: You know, you start with the procedural justice model that we've all been through. But if someone says F you, I'm not moving the car, and it's double-parked, and it's blocking traffic, you're right to take it. And, you know...

GIRMA: Most of the officers nod their heads, say that they're on board. But one of the younger officers, Zack, tells the group that even when he's tried this kind of approach, he doesn't feel like his relationship with the community has improved. Another officer, Pete, said that he has his guard up when he deals with people who don't like the police. Then there's Mueller's interaction with Ed.

MUELLER: And look; nothing that you plan like this ever looks like what you think it's going to look like in six months. But we'll give it a shot. Right, Ed?

MUELLER: Ed's retiring. When are you done?

GIRMA: Ed is the oldest officer here. He's set to retire in a few months. And he spends most of the chat leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head or over his stomach, rolling his eyes as Mueller talks.

MUELLER: What would we like? Have them go away satisfied, even if they didn't like the outcome. Right, Ed?

MUELLER: Good. Now get the fuck out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #2: OK, 597 South Broadway, EDP, with cigarettes and a lighter, trying to light the fuel pump.

MCEVERS: We wanted to see if Yonkers cops were actually using procedural justice on the job. So we go out with the police in the 3rd district. It's one of the poorer parts of Yonkers. It's the night shift. And just as we roll out in the car, the dispatcher says there's a woman at a gas station who's trying to set a fuel pump on fire.

SEAN BERRY: Might be Sherron, you think, right?

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #2: It could be Sherron.

MCEVERS: Sherron Atwell is a young woman with addiction and mental health issues, and the cops get a lot of calls about her. When we make it to the gas station, she's not there, but the man behind the counter says she went to the laundromat next door.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: Right here. Yeah, with the white shirt on right there, was trying to light the gasoline..

BERRY: Thank you. It's Sherron. Sherron, can you - Sherron, do me a favor. Sherron, can you come out and talk to me real quick?

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #2: Come over here. Come over here.

BERRY: You're not in trouble. Come on.

MCEVERS: The two cops we're following go inside the laundromat. And one of them, Sean Berry, takes the lead. He walks Sherron to a corner, away from some of the customers.

BERRY: Let me talk to you. Come on. Let's go outside. Come talk to me. Leave these people alone. It's me. You know me. Stop it.

MCEVERS: Sherron refuses to go outside, and Sean Berry lets her refuse and says, OK, let's sit here and talk about what happened.

BERRY: What is going on? Why are you - what's with the lighter in your hand? Talk to me. What are you doing?

MCEVERS: This isn't the first time the gas station has called about Sherron.

BERRY: Please don't go back there. All right? It's not worth it, right? I'm trying to be level with you.

MCEVERS: So it's a pretty calm conversation. But then a lot of cops start showing up. And here's where we should say Sean is Black, and Sherron is Black, but most of the dozen or so cops who crowd around the laundromat window, including Sean's partner, are white. We later asked, why so many cops? And they said the original call went out like there might be a fire at the gas station. So the cops are crowding around. Sherron is getting more frustrated. And Sean keeps his hands down at his side, not at his waist near his gun. But still, Sherron is upset.

BERRY: I thought you meant...

ATWELL: All up in my goddamn business.

BERRY: Sherron, you better relax. You better relax.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #2: You've got to chill with this.

ATWELL: Stop asking me dumbass questions then.

BERRY: Yeah. Yeah. Calm down. You're causing a scene in here. Relax. Me and you don't act like that. Stop jumping up and acting like there's going to be a problem.

ATWELL: You know what? You know what?

BERRY: We're having a bad day today. That's all. That's OK. So what's probably going to happen now - you're not going to jail...

MCEVERS: It takes a while, but Sean is eventually able to convince Sherron to leave the laundromat on her own, to get searched and get helped into an ambulance, all without being handcuffed. The police then follow her to the hospital, where she'll get a mental health check. And if you look at this one way, Sean did not escalate the situation, though we did have to wonder what would have happened if we hadn't been there recording the whole thing.

GIRMA: And the way Sean handled everything, explaining why he was there, telling Sherron what she'd done wrong, being respectful, that's procedural justice 101 - transparency, politeness, calm.

MCEVERS: But if you look at it another way, this also made us think, why do you even need so many armed police officers in a situation like this? We'll get into this more later. But is it possible the presence of so many uniformed men and women with guns was making the situation worse, and is sending Sherron to the hospital, only for her to be released later that night, like she was so many times before, the best thing for her and for the cops?

GIRMA: And here's one more thing. Sean later told us he learned to stay calm and de-escalate, not in the procedural justice training, but in his previous life as a used car salesman, where he got really good at dealing with people.

MCEVERS: The procedural justice training, he told us, reinforced what he already knew. So that got us thinking, what about other cops who don't have the same experience as Sean? Does procedural justice training work for them?

GIRMA: We asked Simone about this. Remember, she says it's hard to make these trainings sink in. That's what she saw when she was reporting on cops who had procedural justice training in Chicago.

WEICHSELBAUM: And what I had found when I went out there and really looking at procedural justice is that the culture wasn't sticking. But why wasn't it sticking? So I interviewed the lieutenant who actually oversaw the training and was very, very frustrated that there was no accountability. You would come in, take this class, check your box and leave, and that was the end of it.

MCEVERS: That lieutenant eventually left the police department and later told Simone that what you have to do is find ways to compel cops to practice what they've learned in their trainings.

WEICHSELBAUM: You have to test them, give them awards, make it an incentive. If you fail, you know, a test on procedural justice, maybe you lose vacation pay. Like, there's some sort of accountability.

GIRMA: And that is starting to happen in some departments around the country. Yonkers Commissioner John Mueller says he's open to putting some of these accountability measures in place, but, like in a lot of places, it would have to get approval from the police union to do that.

MCEVERS: We should also say a recent study found that for cops who did procedural justice training in Chicago, the number of times cops reported using force did drop by a few percentage points.

WEICHSELBAUM: What I also thought was interesting is after Chicago was sort of the test city, DOJ then gave grants to other cities to implement it. And Minneapolis was one of those cities.

MCEVERS: All Minneapolis cops were required to do procedural justice training. Two years later, a Minneapolis cop killed George Floyd.

WEICHSELBAUM: Just because a city embarked on procedural justice, you know, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a wholesale reform in police action.

MCEVERS: But still, procedural justice is John Mueller's North Star, his main approach to reform and the main approach for a lot of other departments around the country.

GIRMA: At a time when people are protesting against police, Mueller says procedural justice is one way to start repairing that relationship. Again, it all goes back to customer service.

MUELLER: The people are our clients. Let's make sure that they walk away being satisfied. I am satisfied with the way I was treated. I am satisfied with the outcome. I may not agree with it, but I am satisfied with the outcome. And if you can do that, you're going to make friends and you're going to add credibility for the policing profession in general.

MCEVERS: OK, so that is John Mueller's reform plan. But what about this history of police brutality in Yonkers that we talked about in the beginning? How do you make changes now and also account for the past?

DANNY SULLIVAN: Before you try to fix what is wrong today, you have to travel back in time and fix what happened then.

MCEVERS: We'll be back after a break.

GIRMA: As we were reporting this story, John Mueller's reform plan seemed to be working, at least in ways we could measure. The number of times cops have reported using force has gone down since Mueller took over, and the crime rate is down, too. And that's better than similar-sized cities in the state.

MCEVERS: And after 13 years, the Justice Department might soon end its monitoring of Yonkers. We've been told this by multiple people involved in the process. All the things the feds wanted Yonkers to change - better policies on use of force, stop searches and arrests, better ways for people to file complaints against cops and get those complaints investigated, better ways to track and identify problematic officers - all of that has been happening.

GIRMA: If the Yonkers Police Department is going to change, it's because John Mueller willed it to happen with his wonky ideas, rebuttals and speeches. To spend a day with him is to feel like you're on tour, rushing from one thing to another, talking up the Mueller reform plan, selling it to people around town. One Mueller project is with the city's schools. Counselors and cops identify kids who are starting to commit crimes and try to pull them out of it.

MUELLER: We are worried about you and we're worried about your children, and we want to help.

GIRMA: He started a program to recruit young people of color who want to be cops, providing free prep classes for the police entrance exam, getting cops to sponsor potential recruits and pay their test fees. Mueller stops by a class to give a pep talk.

MUELLER: Just keep on putting the time in, cranking it out. You're so far ahead of the game, I can't tell you.

GIRMA: He goes to community board meetings to answer people's questions.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: Can you talk to us a little bit about the gun situation in Yonkers?

MUELLER: You should know that it's a very small subset of the population. There's five kids that are capable of that kind of violence. The other 45 are along for the ride. So when we really focus on those five, we're good. We can solve these problems.

GIRMA: And Mueller isn't being chauffeured back and forth across Yonkers like some big city commissioner. He drives himself from place to place, and people on the street recognize him.

MUELLER: Sup, guys. Yes, sir. He yells out, Commissioner.

GIRMA: This is something that struck us. How many people in Yonkers do seem to like Mueller?

TASHA: He's always in the community, and we actually have a commissioner that cares.

JONATHAN: He - in my view, he represents, like, progressive politics. He represents the next step moving forward to address.

MADDIE: The last police commissioner wasn't as nice as this. He wasn't someone who really cared about the community. A lot of people got beat in our community - a lot of people. That's not happening under Mueller.

KAREN EDMONSON: I had problems with him in the beginning 'cause I thought, well, you're a part of this whole thing. That past - you - how do I separate you now from the club that I knew existed, and, you know, how?

MCEVERS: That last person you're hearing is Karen Edmondson. She used to be the head of the NAACP in Yonkers, and she was the one who helped get the Justice Department to come investigate the Yonkers police in the first place. And since then, she has stayed in touch with Mueller, encouraging him to stick with the reforms.

MCEVERS: She says, yes, Mueller can now be separated from the past because he's the first Yonkers police commissioner she has seen who's actually changing things.

EDMONSON: I've been able to convince him that his goal as commissioner - he should strive to make Yonkers a model police department.

MCEVERS: All of this got us thinking, what happens when Mueller leaves? If so much of this reform rests on one guy, does it all fall apart when his term is up in 2024? If there's no Mueller to set up trainings, go out and sell new ideas to his cops and to his city, what happens then? Simone asked Karen about this.

WEICHSELBAUM: It's, like, one man trying to make a difference. And when I keep pushing him like, oh, what happens when you leave? What happens when you leave? It'll be fine.

EDMONSON: No, it won't. It won't be fine when John Mueller leaves. It could go back. Yonkers - there's a tendency, right? No one's watching the store. You really need to monitor to make sure it's being maintained.

MCEVERS: Still, at the time of our reporting, Mueller was firmly in place, and all of his reforms were going forward. But the one thing we still wanted to know was, is that reform enough for people who can't separate the past from the present?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: My role is to ensure that as many citizens as possible have an opportunity to be heard.

GIRMA: So remember that public forum we talked about in the beginning when people in Yonkers came forward to talk about the police? Some people were impressed with the reform. A lot of people were not.

MCEVERS: There was one guy who got up to speak. His name is Danny Sullivan. And when he got up to that podium, he started by just reading a list of questions...

SULLIVAN: Have you ever been beaten by a cop before?

SULLIVAN: I have. Have you ever been taken into a hallway and told to pull down your pants and have a cop shine his flashlight on your rectum looking for drugs? I have.

MCEVERS: After this list of questions and answers, Danny Sullivan told the story of how he says he was mistreated by Yonkers cops several times starting back in the early 2000s.

SULLIVAN: I was wrongfully arrested. I was assaulted. I made a complaint. And by doing so, that led to me being wrongfully convicted.

MCEVERS: And then Danny said this thing that really struck us. Basically, it's all fine and good to talk about police reform going forward. But what if you haven't fully dealt with the wrongdoing of the past?

SULLIVAN: Before you try to fix what is wrong today, you have to travel back in time and fix what happened then. Thank you very much for your time. God bless you. Love is love. Thank you.

GIRMA: About six months after the public forum, we met up with Danny Sullivan at an Irish bar on the north side of Yonkers. We sat outside. Every time a cop car went by, he would stiffen up and be like, look. There they go.

MCEVERS: Danny grew up in Yonkers. He's white. A lot of his friends are Black and Latino. And he says back in the day, the cops would tell him to, quote, "stick with his own kind."

GIRMA: In 2002, Danny was arrested for robbery and got out on bail. Later, in the summer of '03, he went to the courthouse to pick up some documents about his case. He says he ran into the cops who arrested him, and one insulted him. And then, Danny says, the cop hit him in the face.

SULLIVAN: All hell broke loose.

GIRMA: And, he says, a woman saw it happen.

SULLIVAN: The lady in the hallway said, oh, hell, no. He hit you. He hit you. He hit you.

MCEVERS: Danny filed a complaint, which at the time you were required to do at the precinct, which meant he had to see the officers he was complaining about. Danny says he did run into one of the officers, and he told Danny he would regret filing that complaint.

GIRMA: Eight days later, Danny says cops followed him into a store, and one started yelling at him.

SULLIVAN: Before he even seen me, he's screaming, he's swallowing crack. He's swallowing crack.

MCEVERS: The police arrested him, took him to the hospital. They accused him of possessing 10 bags of crack and swallowing some of the bags. However, a toxicology report taken at that same hospital showed there was no crack in his system, and Danny says he had no crack at all. Still, Danny was charged with possession with intent to sell. He pleaded guilty, he says, to avoid jail time for the earlier robbery charge and for this drug charge. And he did three years probation, which he says kept him from getting a good job at the time. We should say we tried to talk to the cops who Danny says wrongfully arrested him in 2003. One, Rick DeVito, declined. He's retired now. Two others, Chris Hutter and Louis Venturino, are also retired. They did not respond. A fourth, Bryant Pappas, is still on the force and now has a desk job. He also did not respond. A spokesman for the Yonkers police said the Internal Affairs Department has an extensive file with Danny's allegations and that there is no evidence to corroborate his allegations.

GIRMA: Yonkers is a pretty small city. Danny runs into Police Commissioner Mueller from time to time around town, and what he wants to talk about with Mueller is this drug case from '03. The case, Danny says, is a wrongful conviction. It's hard to hear at first, but in this video taken during a vigil for DMX after he died, Danny is telling Mueller his story. Mueller tells Danny it's not his job to overturn old cases

MUELLER: Listen. I'm never going to lie to you, OK? I'll always tell you the hard truth, the good truth, the bad truth and everything in between. I'm not going to make up a lie to try to get you out of here. I'm going to tell you the truth. You're talking about an overturned conviction. Has to go through the district attorney's office. Now...

MCEVERS: And Danny gets it. The police commissioner can't reopen old cases, but he can have an influence over whether officers are held accountable.

SULLIVAN: If I get my conviction overturned and it's proven that the officers that were on my paperwork will - did wrongful doings to me, what will you do to them?

MUELLER: I don't know what I can do. It's - how many years ago was it?

MUELLER: Seventeen years ago. Most of the people you named don't even work there anymore. I don't know if we could do anything to them, to be perfectly honest with you. Is that wrong?

SULLIVAN: No, that's a respectful answer. I only ask for respect. That's it.

MUELLER: And did I give you respect?

GIRMA: Danny doesn't get anywhere with Mueller that day, but the conversation with Mueller and his testimony at those public forums? That motivated him.

MCEVERS: Since then, Danny has gotten a bank card so he could request documents, bought books about the law, learned how to make Freedom of Information requests and write formal letters, started sending dozens of these letters to police officers, reporters, courts, DA, city council members, the mayor, U.S. reps. I know all this because he texts me copies of the letters.

GIRMA: Danny is like a Yonkers police savant at this point. Everywhere he goes, he sees police who he believes did something wrong, not just to him, but to other people in Yonkers, cops who he says were never punished.

MCEVERS: This ex-cop who pleaded guilty to lying to get a warrant on a drug raid where a man died? He only did a few weekends in jail and is now a prominent business owner in Yonkers.

GIRMA: This one, who appeared in multiple lawsuits and complaints by citizens and who has a documented history of being disciplined by his superiors? He was never found liable and retired with a good pension.

MCEVERS: This one, who was seen on a security camera video apparently slamming a woman to the floor? She sustained a severe brain injury, and the city paid her family more than $1,000,000. But the city admitted no wrongdoing. The cop was later found not guilty, and he is still on the force. In fact, he's even been promoted.

GIRMA: Danny says there has to be more accountability for officers accused of wrongdoing.

SULLIVAN: You have benefited from the city of Yonkers for so long, and you have got pensions, raises, promotions. You should be exposed to the public.

MCEVERS: Until that happens, Danny says, Yonkers police can't claim their department is reforming.

SULLIVAN: 'Cause I don't feel that it's fair when people say it's a new day and time. What about the people that were affected by the old day and time?

GIRMA: This is a question a lot of police departments are having to answer these days, Simone says, as they look to reform. Prosecutors around the country are reopening old cases like Danny's, looking for patterns, throwing cases out and sometimes going after cops accused of wrongdoing.

WEICHSELBAUM: It's not just the police department. It's the city. It's the prosecutor's office. It's the whole local criminal justice system.

MCEVERS: And the other way police departments are being held accountable, Simone says, is more transparency. Like, the things that Danny says happened to him back in the day probably would have been recorded on someone's phone now, and there'd be more ways for him to report it.

WEICHSELBAUM: I do think policing is better for all of us if, A, we know what cops are up to, and B, cops are aware that if they have an action and they're founded for doing something wrong, the public will know about it. There's a saying at The New York Post, but a saying I always say as a reporter to people when they get mad when I call them - and I say, if you don't want it printed, don't let it happen.

GIRMA: After we met Danny and heard his story, we decided we should start talking to other people who say they were mistreated by cops in Yonkers. Simone is an investigative reporter, and she thought we should start digging into past complaints against the Yonkers cops, especially during the years that Yonkers was being monitored by the feds.

WEICHSELBAUM: And then we started learning about the bad apples of that era. And then we started running their names, looking up lawsuits, looking up news clips. And that's when we learned this sort of ongoing problem of these cops from that era. It wasn't just roughing people up. It was supposedly doctoring warrants, falsifying arrests, sending people to jail and prison who shouldn't be there. And I found it interesting that we uncovered this ourselves by connecting the dots.

And I was like, in all our conversations about what you're doing to change the department, why didn't this come up?

MCEVERS: That will come up in our next episode.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #12: She starts screaming and banging on the door, Mom - she was hysterical - the police beat me. The police beat me. Mom, the police beat me.

MCEVERS: This episode was reported by Dan Girma, Simone Weichselbaum and me. Simone is no longer at the Marshall Project. She's now an investigative reporter at NBC News. Huge thanks to both organizations for making this collaboration possible. This episode was produced by Dan and mixed by Rhaina Cohen and Lee Hale. It was mastered by Gilli Moon. Big thanks also to Jess Jiang and Annie Iezzi. The episode was edited by Jenny Schmidt, Leslie Eaton, Nicole Beemsterboer and Bruce Auster, with help from Emefa Agawu, Chris Benderev, Rhaina Cohen, Tony Cavin, Gerry Holmes, Martin Kaste, Denice Rios, Luis Trelles and Yowei Shaw. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom. Our researcher is Tracy Brannstrom. Fact-checker is Sarah Knight. Archivist is Susie Cummings. Our lawyer is Micah Ratner. Our boss is Anya Grundmann. Big thanks to Neal Carruth.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more from Yonkers next week.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.