Bratt, Ray vs. transparency
THEY MAY HAVE butted heads in the past, but the city’s current top cop and his predecessor are in lockstep when it comes to whether to release the NYPD’s disciplinary records.
Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Friday that he agrees with Bill Bratton that officers’ disciplinary records should not be made public. “I do not believe minor transgressions of employees should be posted for all the world to see,” he said.
Kelly added that when, as police commissioner, he tried to cut off media access to the records the NYPD’s lawyers told him he couldn’t do it. But Bratton’s lawyers in the NYPD Legal Bureau now came to the opposite conclusion, as revealed in the Daily News Wednesday.
They made a decision several months ago that the disciplinary records which had been compiled on a “Personnel Orders” clipboard in the NYPD press office are protected under section 50-a of the state’s civil rights code, which prohibit their disclosure unless a judge orders them released.
Those orders had been available for review to any news organization without question for decades.
On Saturday, Public Advocate Letitia James voiced her opposition to the change. “At a time when too many New Yorkers feel as though the scales of justice are tilted, we must work to make our system more transparent, not less so,” she told The News. “I am calling on the NYPD to reverse this policy change.”
A spokesman for Mayor de Blasio, who campaigned on increasing NYPD transparency, said Thursday that the NYPD “had no choice” but to limit access to comply with the law.
The move has earned sharp criticism from good government advocates — who noted that cops are a special case among government workers because they have the power to use deadly force.
“It’s hard to imagine information more in the public interest,” said Adam Marshall of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press.
Some pointed out that under this standard, the outcome of a pending disciplinary case against Daniel Pantaleo — the cop accused of misconduct in the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014 — could never see the light of day.
“The NYPD taking expanded steps to hide officers’ disciplinary records is disgraceful,” said Mark Winston Griffith of Communities United for Police Reform.