Legal Aid sues to open up records on cop discipline

THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY is suing the NYPD and wants a judge to force police to release officer disciplinary summaries that the department now claims are no longer public, the Daily News has learned.

For more than 30 years, the NYPD posted in its press office a clipboard of personnel orders that included the results of internal disciplinary cases from its trial room.

Earlier this year, the NYPD changed the policy, saying such information should never have been released because it violated terms of the state’s 1976 civil rights law.

The law, which protects an officer’s personnel record from public release or from being mentioned in court — unless a judge says so — was passed in part to prevent defense attorneys from attacking an officer’s credibility based on unsubstantiated misconduct claims.

Cynthia Conti-Cook, the Legal Aid lawyer whose request for such information dating to 2011 led in part to the department’s actions, said the NYPD is misinterpreting the law as written.

Police disagree, but also don’t support the current law.

“As the police commissioner has said many times before, the department supports changing the state law to promote additional transparency for the public,” an NYPD spokesman said in a statement.

Mayor de Blasio, meanwhile, has, called for legislative action to amend the provision of the civil rights law, known as 50a.