New NYPD inspector general is a veteran Brooklyn prosecutor with corruption-fighting pedigree

A veteran Brooklyn prosecutor who has focused on police corruption during his career has been named the new inspector general for the NYPD.

Charles Guria, 61, starts the job on Sept. 12, according to the Department of Investigation, the agency that oversees the inspector general’s office.

The position had been filled by Acting IG Jeanene Barrett since Philip Eure, who was the first inspector general when the office was formed in 2014, left the post at the end of last year.

Guria, the son of a city transit cop, was a defense lawyer before joining the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in 1990. He later left the office to investigate police corruption for the Mollen Commission, then returned to the DA’s office and headed the Civil Rights and Police Integrity Bureau until 2014.

Guria helped re-train NYPD officers in the use of stop, question and frisk after a federal judge ruled that the department practiced the tactic in an unconstitutional manner.

DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said Guria is a “dedicated career public servant” whose “deep understanding of police accountability issues within New York City will serve him well as leaders of this critical office within DOI.”

The NYPD IG has conducted a number of investigations since the office was created.

In 2016, the office couldn’t establish a link between low-level crime enforcement and decreases in felonies — the theory behind broken windows policing. The IG also found that most quality-of-life enforcement was concentrated in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

In a 2019 report, it claimed that the NYPD did not substantiate a single complaint of biased policing filed between 2014 and 2018.