Subpoena secret

The NYPD’s extreme secrecy and selective transparency are again undermining the public’s trust in their often stellar work. The latest example: NYPD brass secretly subpoenaed a New York Post police reporter’s Twitter account, an attempt at ferreting out the source of leaked crime-scene photos. To justify the subpoena, police invoked the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 law intended to deter and investigate terrorist attacks.

When the reporter, Tina Moore, found out, the department withdrew the subpoena, but the damage was done.

How boneheaded was the move? NYPD lawyers know full well the breadth of this state’s strong shield laws, which protect journalists from revealing sources. Using the Patriot Act as justification, to boot, risks further politicization of the life-saving anti-terror work the NYPD performs every day.

The subpoena and its faulty rationale are the latest example of the department’s toofrequent use of convenient pretext to sidestep basic transparency. For years, the NYPD used terrorism as a justification for withholding even the most anodyne details about their spending. And the public information office stopped releasing officer misconduct and disciplinary records after decades of making them public, citing vague privacy concerns.

The NYPD has the right to directly investigate cops themselves when unauthorized leaks hurt police work, but they’d have more credibility if they didn’t seem to care only about those disclosures that reflect poorly on the NYPD — while happily letting out information that helps cops’ case in the court of public opinion.

But stay the hell away from journalists reporting the news.