$ecret Blue Wall
IDs of the NYPD’s vendors are ‘not available’
THE NYPD has shrouded in secrecy the recipients of nearly $390 million for purchases of everything from motor fuel to books — writing off the nondisclosures as “privacy/ security.”
Unlike other city agencies, which divulge the recipients of every expenditure on the city’s public transparency website, CheckbookNYC.com, the police have an exemption covering about 8% of its expenses for the current fiscal year.
Neither City Controller Scott Stringer nor the NYPD could explain why complete details on police expenses are routinely withheld.
About 92% of the department’s $4.9 billion budget goes to personnel costs — salaries and benefits for the 36,000 cops and 18,000 civilian members of the nation’s largest police force.
The rest — $389.6 million — appears on Checkbook with the name of the vendor listed as N/A, or “not available.”
Deputy Chief Timothy Trainor, an NYPD spokesman, told the Daily News that the current police budget includes about $30 million for contracts and expenses related to undercover work and counterterror measures — costs the department believes should not be fully disclosed for security reasons.
“Everything else, we agree, should be public,” he said. “We were not aware that it wasn’t.”
Among the NYPD contracts and other expenses from the current fiscal year noted on CheckbookNYC.com but otherwise hidden from the public: l $291,900 for building construction. The vendor? N/A (privacy/security). l $26,420 for “other services and charges”? N/A (privacy/security). l $308.30 for maintenance supplies? N/A (privacy/security).
Even the vendor who received a $3.88 check Dec. 30 from the NYPD to cover an expense listed as “Medical, surgical and lab supply” is a mystery.
After being alerted by The News to the lack of transparency, Stringer fired off a a letter last week to Police Commissioner James O’Neill.
Stringer said his predecessor, John Liu, made the decision to omit details about vendors at the request of NYPD brass. But POLICE DEPARTMENT POLICE DEPARTMENT POLICE DEPARTMENT POLICE DEPARTMENT POLICE DEPARTMENT Stringer argued that such information should be public — unless the disclosures would present a security risk.
“I would be grateful for the opportunity to discuss increasing transparency around NYPD contract and vendor data in Checkbook,” he wrote.
The incomplete disclosures are nothing new.
Since Checkbook started in January 2010 under then-Controller Liu, 437,769 NYPD expenditures — including contracts, hundred-dollar purchases and petty cash expenses — don’t list the name of the person or company paid from city coffers.
These include 49,923 purchases for motor vehicle fuel, 63,725 for automotive supplies, 42,301 for general supplies and materials, 5,568 for overnight travel expenses, 2,550 for books, 1,515 PRIVACY/SECURITY PRIVACY/SECURITY PRIVACY/SECURITY PRIVACY/SECURITY PRIVACY/SECURITY Source: CheckbookNYC.com for cleaning services, 1,278 for postage, 845 for advertising and 305 for cleaning supplies
Full transparency, critics say, eliminates the appearance that police are trying to hide what might be viewed as conflicts of interest. The FDNY also hides the names of some its vendors.
Dick Dadey, who heads Citizens Union, a good-government group, said operating without full disclosure violates the basic tenets of transparency.
“When you don’t reveal who is getting paid and you operate behind a cloak of secrecy, it can undermine the public’s trust in how the money is being spent,” Dadey said. “We need to be able to trust those who are spending our money. Not everything should be public, but not everything should be private, either.”
Robert Freeman of the state’s Committee on Open Government said the city is out of compliance with the law.
“If they are purchasing a kind of device that if disclosed would help terrorists to evade law enforcement, I can understand it, but a denial of access regarding every expenditure simply would not stand up in court,” he said.
Liu said that when Checkbook started, the NYPD, led by then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, resisted.
“We came to an arrangement that the details for most of the expenditures would be available, except for those for a specific public security reason,” Liu said. “It would be hard to come up with a public safety reason why every expenditure under the Police Department would have to be masked.
“Even police officers need toilet paper, and our taxpayers have every right to know, where public safety is not affected, what their tax dollars are being spent on. There’s no reason for total secrecy,” Liu said.
Kelly did not respond requests for comment.
Police sources said that the department frequently discusses — most notably at news conferences and in testimony before the City Council — the various counterterror measures it takes to safeguard the city.
One source said that “it’s common knowledge” that the police use license plate readers, biological and radiation detectors and high-powered weaponry, both in its counterterrorism efforts and in conventional crimefighting. Nothing is hidden, the source said, except the number of such devices in use.
But if the recent past is any indication, that’s not entirely true.
Last February, the New York Civil Liberties Union revealed for the first time that the NYPD had, since 2008, used covert cell phone tracking devices at least 1,000 times.
The purchase and use of the devices, known as Stingrays, had been unknown until the group obtained the information after filing a Freedom of Information Law request. to