NEW YORK CITY! WE HAVE A PROBLEM! CIVILIAN COMPLAINTS ON COPS ARE UP 50%!

The number of NYPD cops under review for racking up too many civilian complaints is up 50% in the last two years, department figures show.

Some 315 of the department's roughly 35,000 officers are enrolled in the NYPD's monitoring program this year because of excessive force complaints.

That's up from 210 officers put in the program in 2007.

The program, created in 1997 to monitor cops with "an inordinate amount of civilian complaints," is in the spotlight in the wake of the fatal shooting of a cop.

The sergeant supervising the anti-crime officer who mistakenly shot and killed off-duty Officer Omar Edwards in East Harlem last month had been in the program twice in his 11-year career.

Sgt. John Anzelino was most recently placed in the mandatory program in April2007 after the family of an ex-con killed in a shootout filed an excessive force complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Anzelino, who has 2,000 arrests to his credit, had been released from the program in April 2009.

The sergeant did not fire in the May 28 friendly-fire incident that killed Edwards - and fellow officers noted that active officers like Anzelino often get more civilian complaints than cops who sit behind desks.

Complaints of excessive force also can be filed by suspects who are simply angry about being arrested.

"The monitoring system is run by cops who have never been on the street, and all it does is generate a lot of paper," one police supervisor said.

Cops land in the program if they get three civilian complaints within 12months, six complaints over five years or two substantiated complaints in five years.

The monitoring program does not cost officers a specialized assignment, such as an anti-crime unit, or prevent them from supervising other cops.

"The NYPD is not disciplining officers found to have abused civilians and does not seem to be doing anything serious to help the mushrooming number of cops being monitored because of large numbers of [civilian] complaints," said Chris Dunn of the NYCLU.

The group obtained a different set of statistics about the program after filing a freedom of information request with the NYPD. Police officials said yesterday the numbers they gave the NYCLU were incorrect.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board said that of the 17 allegations it substantiated against city cops in April, the NYPD dismissed 12 - 70% - without taking disciplinary action.

NYPD officials countered that the ccrb's investigations were often lackluster. Often the civilians who made the complaint were not interviewed, and independent witnesses not questioned.

"Too many of their 'investigations' and findings just don't pass muster. They don't prove that the cop did anything wrong," a police source said.