Lessons unlearned

Let us remind Troy Mayor Patrick Madden that he was elected to be a representative of the city’s residents — all of them — instead of an attorney for the Troy Police Benevolent Association.

Mr. Madden has long seemed confused about that. We’ll point first and foremost to his incomprehensible response to the police killing of Edson Thevenin, an unarmed man who in 2016 was shot dead by Sgt. Randall French after fleeing a traffic stop. The mayor, a Democrat, collaborated with the police to reject and bury the damning findings of an internal police department investigation, which suggested Sgt. French violated department procedures and lied about the circumstances of the shooting, and secretly commissioned a second review.

The resulting report by an outside attorney, Michael Ranalli, rebutted some of the findings of the first investigation (surprise, surprise) but the public didn’t learn anything about either report from Mr. Madden. While the findings of the internal investigation were eventually released by a judge, the mayor claimed — absurdly — that since the taxpayer-funded Ranalli review was attorney-client work product, he would keep it from the public until the resolution of the lawsuit brought by Mr. Thevenin’s widow.

In that case, Mr. Madden forgot that his first obligation was to provide the truth about the shooting to the people of Troy. Instead, he seemed determined to protect the police department from embarrassing revelations. The entire mess remains a stain on Mr. Madden’s time in office and one that will, in many respects, define his tenure when he leaves the role at the end of the year.

Unfortunately, Mr. Madden appears not to have learned anything: His administration’s refusal to release disciplinary records requested by the New York Civil Liberties Union nearly three years ago shows that Troy’s mayor remains inclined to secrecy and determined to shield police from scrutiny, instead of providing accountability and transparency to the public. Mr. Madden still doesn’t understand whom he is supposed to be serving.

Remember that the public has the right to see those disciplinary records, including “open” and “unfounded” complaints against officers, thanks to a change in state law that, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, repealed a 1976 statute that had previously allowed agencies to shield the personnel records of a broad range of public safety workers. And last week, a state Supreme Court justice ordered Troy to turn them over, following an appellate court ruling granting the NYCLU the right to similar files from other cities, and also ordered the city to pay for some of the organization’s court and legal costs.

That’s a loss for the city’s taxpayers, of course, and Mr. Madden’s continued foot-dragging is a loss for city residents who want to improve policing and enhance public trust. The records, after all, will presumably show the public how law enforcement agencies handle disciplinary actions and whether investigations into allegations of police wrongdoing were thorough. They will also show whether officers guilty of wrongdoing were appropriately punished.

They will, in other words, serve an important public purpose, and Mr. Madden’s apparent inability to see that, given his administration’s continued inclination toward secrecy, raises a question: Will he ever learn?