Legal Aid: Name cops in shooting

IF THE NYPD wants to be truly transparent, it would name the four officers who fatally shot a mentally ill Brooklyn man armed with a metal pipe that cops thought was a gun, a Legal Aid Society official told the Daily News.

Criminal Practice head Tina Luongo said she’s trying to determine if there’s a legal avenue to pursue in the April 4 death of Saheed Vassell (right), 34, in Crown Heights.

In the meantime, she said activists need to put public pressure on the NYPD to force it to change policy — and name any cop in a policeinvolved shooting in which someone is injured or killed.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric and a lot of talk about building police-community relations,” Luongo said. “But there is not a lot of very real action on behalf of the police commissioner and the mayor.” City Hall had no comment. But City Councilman Donovan Richards, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said through a spokesman that he supports the release of officers’ names “for the sake of seeing if there’s a pattern of behavior.”

The International Association of Chiefs of Police in a 2016 report concluded that naming cops within 48 hours of a shooting would “enhance public trust in the investigative process and adds to the transparency and perceived integrity of the investigation,” the report said.

A number of police departments around the country have started to identify cops involved in shootings. The San Francisco Police Department, for example, names officers within 10 days of the incident as long as there are no credible threats against the officers.

The NYPD has no plans to change its policy, which dates back about 15 years, when then-Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered cops’ names not be released out of concern they could be at risk of retribution. On Tuesday, Deputy Commissioner Phillip Walzak said the department doesn’t release names “during an investigation to preserve the integrity of the probe.”