NYPD DISCIPLINE RECORDS REVEALED
Long-held disciplinary histories of past & present Finest includes old slap on commish
The other shoe fell on the NYPD Thursday when the watchdog Civilian Complaint Review Board posted online disciplinary records for more than 83,000 active and retired cops, detailing decades worth of alleged misconduct.
Nearly nine months after state legislators repealed a shield law that protected police from prying eyes, records that were once shrouded in secrecy became available with just a click of the mouse.
Not even Police Commissioner Dermot Shea was spared from the disciplinary data dump. Records show the city’s top cop received eight complaints stemming from his work as part of the department’s detective bureau, including one that was substantiated — a 2003 vehicle stop with a frisk.
Shea’s records include an unsubstantiated force complaint from 2011, and three cases where he was exonerated.
The release of disciplinary records was several years in the making, with police unions fighting to prevent information covered by Section 50-a, the law that since 1976 kept police disciplinary records from public view unless a judge said otherwise.
The law, which also applied to firefighters and correction officers, was repealed last June amid widespread protests over police brutality.
A last-ditch effort by NYPD police unions to shield the records was defeated two weeks ago, with an appeals court rejecting the argument that the data disclosure would put cops’ lives in danger.
Mayor de Blasio said 50-a needed to go if the NYPD is to build trust with New Yorkers.
“This is a day we’ve all been working for, for a long time,” the mayor said Thursday. “We would have released [the records] a long time ago, but for the court case ... But now the court has been clear.”
The CCRB records, going back to Jan. 1, 2000, have long been shrouded in secrecy, which critics say provided cover for misbehaving cops and department brass who too often looked the other way or let them off with a slap on the wrist.
The records posted on the CCRB’s city website cover 34,811
active officers and 42,218 retired officers.
It lists their shield numbers, their current or most recent assignment, their rank and a brief summary of the accusations against them — how many complaints, whether they were substantiated and details for each complaint, such as when the incident took place, what was alleged and how the case was adjudicated.
Further information about any incident is available by filing a Freedom of Information Law request.
CCRB Chairman Frederick Davie called 50-a “one of the most restrictive police secrecy laws in the country” and said the its repeal is a “landmark moment for New Yorkers.”
As the police watchdog released its records, NYPD Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo at a One Police Plaza press briefing said that next week the department will post an “online dashboard” that will list what he called a “baseball card” style summary for every active cop — including an officer’s rank, assignment history and commendations, plus any disciplinary history for those who fight the charges in the NYPD’s internal trial room.
Trial room decisions for both current and former cops — which include the administrative judge’s recommendation to the police commissioner as well as the commissioner’s final decision — will also be accessible.
The first NYPD records release will detail discipline cases back to 2018. After that, Pontillo said, more data will be added — for active cops who are disciplined without a trial, and for trials, going back to 2008, for both current and ex-cops.
Records before that are in paper form, Pontillo said, sitting in a New Jersey warehouse and are not likely to be added to the database.
The NYPD also said the dashboard will provide links to the CCRB database and to records being provided by the city’s Law Department, which represents police officers in civil suits.
NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker, who oversees police discipline, said transparency will lead to public trust.
“I think now we’re in a really good place,” Tucker said.
The Daily News in 2016 reported that the NYPD had decided to stop releasing summaries of department disciplinary cases, citing 50-a. The law had been in place since 1976, with the NYPD saying it had inadvertently been violating it for 40 years.
The decision was met with swift backlash.
After last summer’s repeal, the unions were granted a temporary restraining order but it was too late to stop the publication of CCRB records that showed about 4,000 of the current 36,000 cops had at least one substantiated complaint against them.
For 303 of those officers, at least five allegations had been substantiated.
The NYPD on Thursday said 31,000 cops now on the force have zero substantiated complaints against them.