Group vs. NYPD for info on busts

A legal advocacy group pushed back Monday against the NYPD’s claim that it has the right to use information from sealed cases to conduct investigations.

The issue, which could affect millions of cases, was thrust into the headlines in April when Bronx Defenders, a criminal defense non-profit that represents mostly poor, minority suspects, sued the NYPD, accusing the nation’s largest police force of violating the statutes for sealed arrest records.

Instead of destroying all the records — including fingerprints, mugshots and arrest reports — when a person is acquitted or charges are dismissed, police instead keep them and use them in other investigations, the suit said.

Often, such information is shared with prosecutors in future cases, according to the suit, resulting in stiffer sentences if the person in question does get convicted.

The city later asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

It argued state law “does not support a prohibition on the internal use of sealed records” and that such a regulation would “seriously impair the ability of police departments to enforce the law.”

What if, the NYPD argued, a woman was murdered by her husband and police could not access his sealed arrest record to figure out where he had previously been arrested, thereby denying them an opportunity to figure out where he could be hiding?

But Bronx Defenders and the law firm with which it filed the suit, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, said in court papers filed Monday that the law is “designed to prevent any adverse consequence from an arrest that did not result in criminal conviction.”