Police records helped uncover crashes
A Civil Rights Law reform in New York in 2020 proved key to uncovering the human and societal costs of police officers crashing their vehicles.
Sparked by protests against police abuse, that pivotal moment for police transparency nearly four years ago kickstarted USA TODAY Network’s investigation of police-involved crashes, in partnership with Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and the Central Current.
That is because the revelatory reporting on cop crashes, in many ways, stemmed from public records obtained due to the repeal of section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law in June 2020.
Armed with those records, a team of career journalists, data experts and students spent months investigating police crashes. They revealed many cops crashed police vehicles with impunity, while civilians injured in the wrecks faced massive barriers to justice.
The push for more transparency around police actions is ongoing, including court battles spearheaded by USA TODAY Network seeking to reaffirm the public’s right to access police, firefighter, and probation officer misconduct records.
Each new set of disciplinary records released is also being added to USA TODAY Network’s exclusive and searchable database of departments across the state.
New York police disciplinary records had long been shielded from public view, not subject to disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information laws.
That all changed in 2020 when the state Legislature and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved the repeal of 50-a, which was initially intended to protect police officers from attacks on their credibility but evolved into a way of shielding officer disciplinary files from the public.
The USA TODAY Network and partners filed requests with every police agency in the state, and the results are presented in our database of police disciplinary records.
There are records from close to 115 police departments to date, with more than 35,000 records released as of the dawn of 2024. The USA TODAY Network is still awaiting records for close to 300 departments, including 60 agencies that have rejected our FOIL requests.