Repeal of 50-a may prompt release of district attorneys’ problem cop lists
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QUEENS DA MELINDA KATZ AT HER INAUGURATION ON JANUARY 6. EAGLE PHOTO BY CAROLINE OURSO
By David Brand
In November 2019, following a lengthy Freedom of Information Law challenge, the Queens District Attorney’s Office released part of an internal list of police officers with credibility issues, including cops who lied in court. A week later, the Queens DA’s Office released a second roster of cops — this time hundreds of officers who have been named in civil lawsuits.
A third portion of the problem cop database has remained hidden, however.
The Queens DA’s Office declined to release the names of officers who have been the subject of substantiated misconduct allegations — cops who abused their authority or used excessive force, according to Civilian Complaint Review Board investigations and disciplinary proceedings. The office justified the secrecy by citing section 50-a of state civil rights law, a measure which, until Friday, shielded police personnel records from public view.
The repeal of 50-a means the Queens DA, and prosecutors across New York City, may now be forced to turn over additional portions of their problem cop lists under FOIL requirements, defense attorneys say.
“District attorneys, the city and law enforcement agencies can no longer hide behind Police Secrecy Law 50-A since it has been fully repealed, effective immediately,” said Legal Aid Society Cop Accountability Project legal fellow Molly Griffard. “The DAs should disclose any and all records relating to police misconduct in a manner that is easily accessible to New Yorkers.”
Like the Queens DA’s Office last year, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office cited 50-a to justify withholding the names of cops in its internal list. On Wednesday, Gonzalez’s spokesperson Oren Yaniv said the information is subject to FOIL.
The Queens DA’s Office under the late Richard Brown and his successor, Acting DA John Ryan, said the office developed the cop database so that prosecutors could more efficiently turn over information on potential police witnesses to defense attorneys under discovery law.
The information would also help prosecutors anticipate or avoid putting a potential liar on the stand, which could undermine their case.
The disclosure of the two lists in Queens — the cops who judges determined to have lied in court and the cops named in civil lawsuits — came after a legal challenge initiated by Gothamist/WNYC. The office nevertheless said it had an imperative to withhold the names of officers who the NYPD found to have committed misconduct.
“Much of the information contained in this database is protected from public disclosure by Section 50-a of the Civil Rights Law and is subject to protective orders issued by courts, limiting the use of the information to particular proceedings,” Queens DA spokesperson Kim Livingston told the Eagle in December 2019.
The Queens DA’s Office said prosecutors began to compile the internal list in March 2018 — a timeline then-Executive Assistant DA Jim Quinn called into question during a forum on New York’s new bail law in December 2019. A defense attorney in the audience asked Quinn about the list.
“There are tens of thousands of police officers that come through Queens,” Quinn responded. “That list goes back 10, 15 years. We tried to compile as much as we could.”
Queens DA Melinda Katz, who took over the office on Jan. 1, did not respond to emails and a phone call seeking information on whether she would release the names of cops found to have committed misconduct. On the campaign trail in April 2019, she said she would not publish the database of problem cops.
“Police officers are given the benefit of the doubt when they walk into a courtroom, and we need to make sure they're held to the highest standard of credibility,” she told the Eagle at the time. “But without clear and consistent standards for what qualifies an officer to make the list in question or ways to keep details of ongoing investigations confidential, it shouldn't be made public.
The Bronx DA’s Office released a portion of its internal list of officers with credibility issues in October 2019. The office did not respond to an email seeking information on whether they would disclose more names now that 50-a has been repealed.
Manhattan DA Cy Vance also released the names of officers who judges found untrustworthy, as well as documents referencing officers named in civil lawsuits, last year. A spokesperson said Monday that the office does not maintain a list of cops found to have committed police misconduct, however.
The Staten Island DA’s Office has not turned over its internal list, first reported by Gothamist/WNYC, and did not respond to an email seeking information for this story.
Some supporters of 50-a repeal say the measure still does not go far enough to compel the release of misconduct information. Legal Aid, for example, has called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council to make NYPD disciplinary records available on the city’s open data portal.
Defense attorney Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan prosecutor, said the bill is a “step forward” but will result in modest transparency because it only mandates the the release of disciplinary proceeding records, not complaints.
Still, the measure means attorneys can bypass the DA’s lists in some cases to find out which cops have been the subject of NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau and CCRB disciplinary proceedings, Stengel said.
He said he has already sent dozens of FOIL requests to the NYPD and CCRB since Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the 50-a repeal bill June 12 in order to find out the disciplinary history of cops in cases he is working.
“Going forward, every defense attorney should FOIL the police agency and CCRB for all the people involved in the arrest when they get a case immediately,” Stengel said.
But the city’s FOIL process is notoriously slow — and there’s no telling what other information is included in district attorneys’ internal lists, he said. He called on prosecutors to release the full contents in the interest of justice.
“The DA’s offices are gatekeepers of information apart from disciplinary proceedings,” he said. “There’s no legal reason to continue withholding that information.”
