Judge nixes reveal of cop punish files

A judge has blocked a push to put summaries of the NYPD’s misdeeds online.

New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron has granted an injunction that will bar the release of Police Department disciplinary summaries on the internet.

The city, NYPD and the Legal Aid Society had been hoping to release at least partial summaries of police discipline cases online in an attempt to be more transparent with the public.

The Police Benevolent Association, the city’s largest cop union, fought the push, claiming that it violates state Civil Rights Law 50-a, which bars law enforcement agencies from turning over police personnel records.

Engoron agreed, stating as he issued a temporary restraining order that the “city’s proposed action simply and clearly flies in the face of the law.

“(The summaries would) enable an agency to circumvent a host of statutory protections belonging to covered officers,” the judge said.

Engoron also agreed that “transparency of police personnel records is a sensible public policy.”

In its attempt to give the public a glimpse into the disciplinary process, the city wanted to put out a compendium of “short, nonidentifiable summaries of the outcomes of disciplinary trails of NYPD officers” that would “omit any information that would allow the public to identify the subject individual police officers.”

Since the compendium is not in itself a personnel record, the summaries would not violate 50-a. The PBA balked at the city’s logic, claiming that it wouldn’t take much for someone to identify a cop from the summaries.

“The NYPD’s plan to provide greater transparency is lawful, consistent with past court rulings, and in the public interest. The department is reviewing its legal options,” an NYPD spokesman told the Daily News.

An email to the PBA regarding Engoron’s decision was not immediately returned.