Thursday’s Headlines: Drop It Like a Cop Edition

Well, guess what's happening to all those cops who brutally beat the crap out of Black Lives Matter protesters on the streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx last May and June?

Pretty much nothing (as Streetsblog predicted).

After reports by the Department of Investigations  and Human Rights Watch and a lawsuit from the New York Attorney General, just five out of the 64 NYPD officers who were investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau for misconduct during the protests will face "potentially significant discipline" for the head slamming, pepper praying, blood gushing, bone crunching, SUV plowing and other excessive force during the protests, much of which was captured on video, according to a deep dive in TheCity.

Major discipline comprises "penalties....anywhere from 10 lost vacation days to termination."

Another nine officers will receive "minor" discipline, Yoav Gonen and Gabriel Sandoval reported.

That's after the Civilian Complaint Review Board received 297 complaints alleging 2,000 police abuses during the protests last year — and Mayor de Blasio said last December that he looked back on the police conduct during the demonstrations "with remorse."

"I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons and I want the Police Department to do better. And I’m going to insist on that,” Hizzoner fecklessly promised.

Will it change under the next mayor? Don't hold your breath.

In other news yesterday:

• State lawmakers simply couldn't stomach the power grab of our disgraced governor, who tried on Monday to assert unilateral power over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, by splitting the roles of its board chairman and CEO, with the latter answering only to him. So they nixed it. Many covered the slap (or "rebuke," as the times's headline put it). (NYDN, Newsday, NYT, NYPost)
• State Sen. Jessica Ramos’s bill to allow wider cargo bikes passed, thanks to the Rules Committee pushing it to the floor. (Via Twitter)
• Our old man editor was featured with other city machers in a story about how to handle ranked-choice voting. (Curbed)
• An NYC driver was indicted in the high-speed (119 mph!) Cross County Parkway crash that killed three last fall. (NBC)
• The mayor nixed the move of an Upper West Side panel to ban e-bikes — the favored choice of delivery cyclists — from bike lanes. (Streetsblog, WestSideRag)
• From the assignment desk: The Department of Transportation is holding a presser downtown this morning to announce the completion of bus-priority project supposedly fixing the "notorious" backups of Staten Island-bound and Brooklyn-bound express buses that traverse the Hugh L. Carey Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
• How many things did the MTA bus driver who crashed into the Brooklyn building — injuring 14 and destabilizing the building — do wrong? A video from inside the bus counts the ways. (NYDN, NBC, NYPost)
• Brooklyn Beep (and top mayoral contender) Eric Adams invited a dozen reporters on a house tour of his Brooklyn digs, a day after a Politico story raised questions about where, exactly, he lives: Is it in a New Jersey condo with his partner, or in Borough Hall, where he was holed up during the pandemic and still subjects his staffers to punishing hours? Check out what the reporters said about his "wood and brick trimmed" Bed-Stuy basement apartment. (Gothamist, NYT, CNN, NYMag, ABC7, NYPost, NYDN, others) Other reporters weren't taken in by the dog-and-pony show. (Via Twitter)

• Finally, Streetfilms had some raw video today that perfectly captured the traffic congestion that is walloping the city as the pandemic recedes. (Via Twitter)