In a recent NBC News Op-Ed, Jennvine Wong, Staff Attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, argues that police reform may be impossible because of the NYPD’s inability to hold individual officers accountable for misconduct.

Wong also argues that any progress that does not include defunding the police and investment in communities will be merely “a symbolic gesture intended to preserve the status quo.”

“Indeed,” the op-ed states, “our analysis brought us to an unavoidable conclusion: Despite decades of reforms intended to stem police violence and improve transparency, the NYPD, like other police departments around the country, is a force that is beyond reform.”