NYPD Sergeant Sues City and Commissioner Tisch, Alleging NYPD Kept Domestic-Violence Accusation Alive After Not-Guilty Finding to Block Promotion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Verified Complaint alleges post-exoneration gender discrimination, arrest-record discrimination, retaliation, and unlawful refusal to restore promotion path after DCAS allegedly confirmed Sergeant Joel Silverman remained active on Lieutenant list.

New York, New York — June 5, 2026 — Eric Sanders, Esq., of The Sanders Firm, P.C. has filed a Verified Complaint in New York Supreme Court on behalf of NYPD Sergeant JOEL SILVERMAN against THE CITY OF NEW YORK and Police Commissioner JESSICA S. TISCH, alleging that the City and NYPD unlawfully refused to restore and promote him after the Department’s own disciplinary process failed to prove domestic-violence-related allegations against him.

The lawsuit alleges that Silverman, a male NYPD Sergeant with approximately two decades of service, passed Promotion to Lieutenant Examination No. 5535 and was ranked No. 11 on the eligible list as of August 1, 2016. His career trajectory, according to the complaint, was derailed after domestic-violence-related allegations were made by his former spouse in or about July 2016.

The complaint does not challenge NYPD’s authority to investigate serious allegations. The lawsuit challenges what the Department allegedly did after the allegations were not proven.

After a multi-day Department Trial conducted in March, April, and May 2022, Silverman was found not guilty of all disciplinary charges on July 14, 2022. The lawsuit alleges that, once the Department failed to prove the allegations, the City and NYPD had no lawful basis to continue treating those unproven allegations as a permanent promotional disability.

According to the Verified Complaint, Silverman promptly sought restoration to the promotional path after his exoneration. On or about August 9, 2022, he contacted NYPD’s Uniform Promotional Unit regarding his promotion to Lieutenant. He was allegedly informed that he was no longer active on the promotional list and was directed to contact the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. The complaint alleges that DCAS thereafter confirmed, on or about August 19, 2022, that Silverman remained active on the eligible list for Promotion to Lieutenant Examination No. 5535.

Despite that confirmation, the lawsuit alleges, NYPD continued to obstruct his promotion. The complaint further alleges that on or about September 12, 2022, Lieutenant Michael Polizzi informed Silverman that he would have to sue DCAS to reopen the list, even though DCAS had allegedly confirmed that he remained active.

“This case is not about whether NYPD can investigate allegations,” said Eric Sanders, Esq., founder of The Sanders Firm, P.C. “This case is about whether NYPD can keep punishing a male after the Department failed to prove the allegations against him. Once the Department’s own trial process ended in a not-guilty finding, the accusation should not have remained a career death sentence.”

The complaint alleges that defendants converted unproven domestic-violence-related allegations, non-pending accusation history, and gender-based stigma into a continuing promotional disability. It further alleges that the City and NYPD refused to restore Silverman, refused to promote him, failed to provide a lawful explanation, maintained a promotion block, and allowed administrative time to run while his promotional status remained unresolved.

The lawsuit brings claims under the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law, including arrest-record and non-pending criminal accusation discrimination, gender discrimination, domestic-violence-victim status discrimination, and retaliation.

The gender-discrimination claims allege that Silverman was treated less favorably because he is male and because he was a male officer accused in a domestic-violence context. The complaint alleges that defendants imposed and maintained career consequences based on gender-based stereotypes concerning male culpability, male dangerousness, male credibility, and male suitability for promotion after domestic-violence allegations.

The arrest-record and non-pending accusation discrimination claims allege that defendants unlawfully gave adverse employment effect to arrest-related, order-of-protection-related, domestic-violence-related, and/or non-conviction accusation history after the matter was no longer pending or legally available as a basis for adverse employment action.

The retaliation claims allege that Silverman engaged in protected activity by challenging the discriminatory and retaliatory refusal to restore and promote him, objecting to the use of unproven allegations as a promotion bar, contacting NYPD, DCAS, NYPD Labor Relations, and the Uniform Promotional Unit, and filing an EEOC Charge of Discrimination.

The complaint also directly addresses what the City is expected to argue: that the promotional list later expired, closed, or became administratively unavailable. The lawsuit alleges that defendants cannot create or maintain an unlawful promotion block, fail to correct it after exoneration, allow the eligible list to expire, and then rely on that expiration as a defense to liability or make-whole relief.

“The City cannot run out the clock on a Silverman’s career and then claim the clock is a defense,” Sanders said. “If the promotion was unlawfully obstructed while restoration remained available, the later administrative status of the list should not erase the harm. The question is where Silverman would have been but for the City’s conduct.”

Silverman seeks compensatory damages, economic damages, lost wages, lost overtime compensation, lost benefits, lost seniority, pension-related correction, emotional-distress damages, reputational-harm damages, punitive damages against Commissioner Tisch in her individual capacity where legally permitted, attorneys’ fees, costs, interest, and equitable relief.

The lawsuit also seeks declaratory, injunctive, corrective, and make-whole relief, including restoration to the promotional status Silverman would have occupied absent defendants’ alleged unlawful conduct; retroactive promotion to Lieutenant or its full economic and equitable equivalent; correction of salary, overtime, benefits, seniority, pension value, and employment records; and an order preventing defendants from unlawfully relying on non-pending accusation history or unproven allegations to deny employment rights.

The Verified Complaint alleges that the City’s conduct caused Silverman to suffer lost wages, lost overtime, lost benefits, lost pension value, lost promotional seniority, lost rank seniority, career stagnation, reputational harm, emotional distress, humiliation, loss of professional standing, and continuing dignitary injury.

“This case asks a basic civil-rights question,” Sanders said. “When an officer is accused, fights the charges, and is found not guilty, does the Department restore him to the position he earned, or does it quietly keep the accusation alive as an unofficial employment sentence? The law does not permit accusation-based punishment to survive exoneration.”

The lawsuit is pending in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York.

The allegations in the Verified Complaint are allegations. Defendants have not yet answered the complaint.

About The Sanders Firm, P.C.

The Sanders Firm, P.C. is a New York-based law firm focused on civil rights, immigration, employment discrimination, police misconduct, and other high-stakes matters. Its founder and president, Eric Sanders, Esq., is a retired NYPD officer who brings a rare inside perspective to the intersection of government power, public institutions, enforcement discretion, and constitutional accountability.

For more than twenty years, Sanders has counseled thousands of clients and handled complex matters involving police use of force, sexual harassment, retaliation, systemic discrimination, immigration consequences, and related civil-rights violations. He is widely recognized as a leading New York civil-rights attorney and a prominent voice on evidence-based policing, institutional accountability, equal justice, and rights-based immigration advocacy.

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