The Police Lawyer's Trial

For 11 years, Karl Ashanti defended the NYPD in civil-rights cases. Then he was arrested for a crime he didn't commit.

- By Jake Pearson

This story is a collaboration between New York and ProPublica.

By the time Karl Ashanti neared his office in the New York City Law Department's headquarters in March 2018, the police were shutting down Park Place. Ice had fallen from the buildings above, so an officer had cordoned off the area. Ashanti flashed his work ID and the cop let him through. Then, about two-thirds of the way down the block, he ran into a second officer. "Turn around now," John Shapiro barked. "I said now." ¶ Ashanti stiffened. The two men were about the same size, each around six feet tall and 240 pounds. Shapiro was in his blue New York Police Department uniform. Ashanti, a city lawyer, wasn't due in court that day and had dressed casually in dark slacks, a button-down, an overcoat, and a winter hat. The two had never met before, but there was something about Shapiro's brusque demeanor that Ashanti recognized.

For 11 years, Ashanti had defended NYPD officers against lawsuits alleging civil-rights violations in federal court. He was a senior litigator in a little-known Law Department unit that exclusively handles such cases, the Special Federal Litigation Division, known simply as Special Fed. As a Black man who'd grown up in Jamaica, Queens, Ashanti thought he brought valuable perspective to the work. He'd seen how Black people, and Black men in particular, could, through no fault of their own, be targeted by prejudiced men in uniform. Still, Ashanti took pride in his legal skills and had come to embrace the combative approach that Special Fed typically took in fighting claims of police abuse, even in the face of compelling evidence that police behavior violated the constitutional rights of the people they had sworn to protect.