Technically the number of grievances filed to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the mostly toothless and underfunded agency that’s supposed to keep the NYPD in check, went down for the third straight year and fourth time in the last five, but only because of Hurricane Sandy. The New York Post reports that while complaints fell 2 percent, the storm displaced the CCRB for November and December, and forced the agency to get a new phone number not linked to 311, skewing the figures and keeping them from rising for the first time since 2009. While minor allegations of discourtesy and offensive language went down for the year, complaints about excessive force and abuse of authority went up anyway.