Officials: NYPD set to begin making discipline files of cops public

Scores of disciplinary files of NYPD police officers will be made public next week after a federal court ruling that cleared the way for the disclosures, department officials said Thursday.

The first batch of files will contain information going back to at least 2018, with plans to eventually release police files from prior years, officials said. The files, containing decisions of the NYPD trial commissioner, as well as supporting disciplinary files, will be released on a new public computer "dashboard," according to the department. Just how many files will be made public next week remained unclear Thursday.

Eventually, files going back as far as 2008 will be shared with the public after personal information of civilians and sensitive law enforcement aspects have been deleted, officials said.

Department plans to disclose the files came on the same day as the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting certain kinds of complaints against cops, released its own database of disciplinary information. The bare-bones data going back to Jan. 1, 2000, lists names, precincts, complaints and dispositions against 34,811 active police officers and 48,218 inactive cops filed with the agency since then, according to the CCRB.

Earlier this week the federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an attempt by police and fire unions to block disclosure following the repeal last year of Section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law.

But while the NYPD and the CCRB seem to agree on disclosure of disciplinary records, they appear at odds over a number of issues. During a special media briefing Thursday, NYPD officials said that CCRB data mischaracterizes results of disciplinary proceedings, giving the impression that the department ultimately hands out few if any penalties in cases where police misconduct is substantiated.

First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker said a paramilitary organization like the NYPD needs to have the commissioner become the final arbiter of discipline and not the CCRB, as some advocates want.

NYPD Chief Matthew Pontillo said the CCRB uses the wrong denominator in its calculations. Not every case substantiated by the CCRB leads to a guilty verdict after a department trial of a cop, Pontillo said, and therefore shouldn’t be included in trying to figure out how many times the CCRB and police commissioner concur on the penalty.

"If [a cop] goes to trial and is found not guilty that really doesn’t go in the denominator that is asking how many times and what percentage of the time the police commissioner imposes a penalty," Pontillo said, adding that the CCRB shouldn’t expect its recommendation to apply to a not-guilty case.

In an email, a spokesman for the CCRB said the agency "stands by its concurrence rates and believes that, when the Department deviates in any way from a CCRB substantiation and/or a sentencing recommendation, it is important for the public to know."

Reacting to reports that the NYPD failed to discipline officers in 70% of cases, NYPD spokesman John Miller said that in about 90% of cases prosecuted by the NYPD in the trial room, and 60% of CCRB cases, some form of discipline was applied.

"You can't count officers being found not guilty after trial … as part of the rejection of discipline," Miller said.

By Anthony M. DeStefano

tony.destefano@newsday.comtonynewsday

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.