The New York Press Club will give its top honor, the Gold Keyboard award for outstanding enterprise or investigative reporting, to Graham Rayman of the Village Voice for his investigative series, “The NYPD Tapes.”

Voice editor Tony Ortega says that the 2010 series has led to several administrative actions by the police department:

It offered an unprecedented view inside a typical police precinct, and exposed the downgrading of crime, orders that led to possible civil rights violations, and the constant pressuring of officers to make quotas for arrests, summonses, and stop-and-frisks. The series also disclosed how a serial rapist in Washington Heights was allowed to get away for months with his crimes because the complaints were downgraded to misdemeanors.


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In the wake of the series, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly transferred and administratively charged the precinct commander, and two sergeants and two police officers with manipulating a complaint report. He also transferred a chief in Patrol Borough Brooklyn North. In addition, Kelly revamped the way sex crimes are investigated, after the Voice reported on complaints from rape victim advocates.

Rayman — who beat out writers from the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine for the award — will be recognized at an awards dinner on June 13.