State Legislature repeals longstanding protection of police discipline records

State lawmakers on Tuesday repealed a decades-old law that has kept law-enforcement officers’ disciplinary records secret, spurred by the national uproar over the death of George Floyd.

The measure to make officers’ records and misconduct complaints public is among several police accountability bills racing through the state Legislature this week. Others would provide all state troopers with body cameras and ensure that police officers provide medical and mental health attention to people in custody.

Many of those bills were first proposed years

ago but got new momentum recently amid huge protests nationwide condemning police brutality.

The passage came as criminal charges were brought Tuesday against an NYPD officer over his rough treatment of a protester during demonstrations following the death of Floyd, a black man who pleaded he couldn’t breathe as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck on May 25.

Eliminating the New York state law, known as Section 50-a, would make complaints against officers, as well as transcripts and final dispositions of disciplinary proceedings, public for the first time in decades.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said he will sign the repeal.

Momentum for ending the secrecy law reached a crescendo in recent days as marchers filled streets in cities large and small to rally against police abuses — amplifying the calls of reform advocates who spent years pushing for change in the wake of other high-profile police killings, including that of Eric Garner in 2014.

“This is no time for rejoicing,” said state Senator Kevin Parker, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn. “This bill has been around for over a decade . ... The only reason why we’re bringing it to the floor now because the nation is burning.”

The Legislature on Monday passed other police accountability measures, banning police from using chokeholds, guaranteeing the right to record police activity and making it easier to file lawsuits against people making race-based 911 calls.

As lawmakers acted on accountability legislation, NYPD Officer Vincent D’Andraia was being arraigned on assault and other charges days after a bystander recorded him pushing protester Dounya Zayer, causing her to hit her head on the pavement.

D’Andraia was released after his lawyer entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf. The officer was ordered to stay away from Zayer who was hospitalized after the May 29 altercation with what she said were a concussion and a seizure.

“Dounya was assaulted for the very reason she was protesting, and that’s police brutality,” said Zayer’s attorney, Tahanie Aboushi, adding that D’Andraia’s supervisor should face punishment beyond an announced reassignment.

“If not for this being on video it would have been business as usual for the NYPD,” Aboushi said.

Zayer, 20, called D’Andraia a coward and suggested the assault would only deepen mistrust of law enforcement.

“I was protesting for a reason,” Zayer said in a video tweeted from her hospital bed. The officer, she added, “should have had the self restraint to not hurt the people he’s supposed to be protecting.”

The police department suspended D’Andraia, 28, last week without pay.