A LABOR PARTY, NOT A pROGRESSIVE ONE:

Years ago, before he was mayor, Bill de Blasio laid out the essence of any effort to reform the country's largest police department. New York City needed true civilian oversight.

Describing the city agency tasked with investigating police misconduct as "more of a lapdog than a watchdog," he proposed in 2009 to give it more independence, authority, and guaranteed funding. A few months later, he again pledged change, saying in a statement, "the NYPD cannot oversee itself."

Then, in 2013, he was elected mayor. And rather than create more independence for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, he ended up asserting ever-more control over the agency, intent on avoiding conflict with the Police Department, according to internal communications obtained by ProPublica and interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials.

The mayor's office edited reports and testimony to soften criticism of the NYPD and roll back proposals for more effective oversight. It maneuvered to block some of the same policies de Blasio had advocated for years before. And when the civilian officials were faced with obstruction by the NYPD, the mayor's office ignored their pleas for support.

When the CCRB in a draft report two years ago noted that police were withholding footage from body-worn cameras, an aide to the mayor ordered the CCRB to take out the direct reference to the department: "Let's simplify and remove the acronym 'NYPD.'"

New Yorkers and others have seen de Blasio's deference to the police play out on the public stage, perhaps most infamously when he defended NYPD's response to last summer's racial justice protests. But the internal accounts show how City Hall worked behind the scenes to protect the NYPD from scrutiny.

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