New York State Police have systematically minimized domestic violence allegations against their own officers, handing down token punishments even when victims suffered physical injuries and troopers used department resources to harass them — while ordinary Americans face the full weight of the law for the same conduct.
A trove of newly unearthed disciplinary records reveals that New York's second-largest police force substantiated domestic abuse allegations against 18 of its employees and still treated the findings as personnel matters rather than crimes. Most of the incidents took place between 2014 and 2024. The records were confidential under state law until 2020.
The pattern is unmistakable. Consider the case of trooper Mike Baker. On April 22, 2019, his wife called 911 for the sixth time. Her lip was cut and swollen — Baker had tried to grab a cell phone from her hand and it struck her mouth. Their 11-year-old son was in the home. When the 911 dispatcher asked her husband's name, she replied: "Mike Baker. He's a New York state trooper."
A local police department responded — but a State Police sergeant overheard the dispatch. Five of Baker's colleagues rushed to the scene and took charge. Five minutes after the third State Police vehicle arrived, the local cops left. A sergeant took Baker's statement. Another interviewed his wife. She knew the drill.
"I've dealt with the police over these things before," she told the officer, visibly bruised and crying, according to an incident report. "It always gets swept away."
She was right to be skeptical. While the International Association of Chiefs of Police advises agencies to adopt "zero tolerance" policies and discipline officers found to have committed domestic violence with sanctions "up to or including termination," New York State Police had their own philosophy.
A spokesperson for the department claimed it has "zero tolerance for domestic violence or misconduct by its members" — but the disciplinary records tell a different story. Substantiated allegations, including those involving physical injuries and officers using department resources to harass or intimidate victims, resulted in penalties that amounted to slaps on the wrist.
Mark Wynn, a former police lieutenant in Nashville's domestic violence unit and an expert on abuse prevention, stated the obvious: "You can't allow people, if they're accused of a violent crime, to work on the street. This person has a gun. They have a badge, and they can use that authority."
Even the most conservative studies suggest tens of thousands of current law enforcement families have experienced domestic abuse, according to syracuse.com. Most reports never make it to court — survivors are reluctant to involve the system, and prosecutors find the cases hard to build. When the accused is a cop, the department itself becomes judge and jury. And in New York, the department has shown it will judge its own with extraordinary leniency.
The two-tier justice system is the open question. When five of your colleagues can show up to take over a 911 call before local police even finish their work, when substantiated abuse earns a token reprimand instead of termination, the institution is not policing itself — it is protecting itself. The question is who, if anyone, has the authority to police the police.
