NEW YORK, (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara said yesterday that “millions of people” across the country believe their police departments are biased against them and that he had not shied away from charging officers for misconduct.
Bharara, who is known for high-profile prosecutions of wrongdoing on Wall Street and in the Albany state capital, said at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York that last week’s shooting of five police officers at a protest in Dallas was “nothing less than heartbreaking and blood-curdling.”
But he said he recognized concerns about bias in the wake of recent shootings of African Americans by police officers.
“Undeniably from time to time, there are people who are not living up to the standards of their jobs,” he said.
“That is true in business; that is true, God help us, in Albany; that is true sometimes in police departments,” Bharara told Reuters Editor at Large Harold Evans. “People should be held accountable.”
Bharara, who is responsible for the Southern District of New York, said that as a prosecutor, he works closely with police. He called the New York police department one of the finest in the nation.
But he said his office and New York police chiefs, including current Commissioner William Bratton and former Commissioner Ray Kelly, had brought charges against officers who violated their oaths in the past.
“Nobody flinches from bringing prosecutions if the law allows it,” Bharara said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Bharara also criticized what he called a “naive” decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an insider trading case, which he said would limit prosecutors.
