The great NYPD cop-out

Torn between a clear City Council law requiring the release of data and an insanely rigid reading of a state statute shielding uniformed personnel from scrutiny, the NYPD sides with the latter. Bad move. Three years ago, the Council required the NYPD to produce use-of-force incident reports — including excessive use of force, as determined by the department — disaggregated by precinct.

On overall reports, the department complied. (By the way: The NYPD is, by every honest measure, restrained.) But on the excessive force subset, it refuses, telling the city’s Department of Investigation that those reports will only be broken down by borough.

The excuse: A precinct-level breakdown could some way, somehow identify specific officers and thus run afoul of the state civil rights provision called 50-a, which prevents disclosure of some information impacting a police officer’s promotion.

That’s utter nonsense. There are hundreds of cops per precinct.

In recent years, the NYPD has begun interpreting 50-a so narrowly that all personnel orders on disciplinary outcomes, which for decades had been made public, no longer see the light of day.

And, yes, the courts have backed up this restrictive interpretation.

It creates a vicious cycle. Emboldened police unions now fight to expand the interpretation still further by suing to block release of body camera footage — even that which exonerates officers.

Those actions, in turn, cause the NYPD to overreact, such as in the excessive-force reports.

Enough. It is clearly in the public interest to discern if one precinct has more of an excessive force problem than another, and revealing this data is no threat to any individual officer’s privacy.

Until 50-a is amended, if the NYPD is at all serious about Police Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill’s pledge to be more transparent, it can’t continue to buckle to the unions like this. Give us the data the public demands, and deserve.