Citing “visceral reactions” nationwide to police use of force, a state committee overseeing New York’s Freedom of Information Law is urging the governor and Legislature to remove secrecy over police records that include misconduct cases.

Police departments often cite the privacy of personnel records as a reason to keep documents confidential, including internal reports that concluded officers broke the law and one case of an officer involved in an off-duty hit-and-run accident, the Committee on Open Government said in a report released in December.

“Information about what an officer actually has done can be kept from the public in most cases,” the committee said. “And it is.”

New York is one of the only states to exempt police personnel files from its open records law, the report said, and state law otherwise sufficiently protects police officers as it does other government workers.

Originally enacted in 1976, the exemption was intended to prevent defense lawyers from rifling through personnel records for information to help cross-examine officers who testify in criminal cases, the report said.

“Over time this narrow exception has been expanded in the courts to allow police departments to withhold from the public virtually any record that contains any information that could conceivably be used to evaluate the performance of a police officer.”

The union representing 3,600 uniformed state troopers and 1,400 retirees opposes changing the law.

Tom Mungeer, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers, said the exemption balances the public interest in knowing whether an officer has been disciplined with protecting his privacy rights “against unwarranted public ridicule for a minor infraction that may be recorded in his personnel record.”

The law authorizes a judge to inspect a personnel file to determine if it contains anything that might affect an officer’s credibility when testifying in court, he said.

“The fewer exemptions that exist, the more transparent our government is,” said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union. “The police are probably the more active and visible representation of government that people come in contact with.”

Open records advocates say shining a light on police conduct has never been more important since the deaths of an unarmed Staten Island man last year in an apparent police chokehold and the shooting of an unarmed man in Ferguson, Missouri.

The committee’s 11 members include former Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, once the Rochester police chief, and several other senior Cuomo administration officials. A proposal to revise the police exemption is under review at the governor’s office, spokesman Richard Azzopardi said.

Earlier this week, Cuomo officials were responding to transparency watchdogs who had criticized another open records issue when they said the administration will consider revising its new email system. The system purges most messages in 90 days.

The Attorney General’s Office, which has had a 90-day deletion policy since 2007 in its separate email system, when Cuomo was the state’s top prosecutor, said this week that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is suspending it.

Committee Executive Director Robert Freeman recently met with state Assembly members to discuss several proposed changes in the sunshine law. Other report recommendations introduced as legislation this year would expedite appeals when government information requests are refused, award attorneys’ fees in some circumstances and subject the Legislature to the law’s disclosure requirements.

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, who chairs the Government Operations Committee, said they’ll certainly consider the proposal to remove the police exemption. The Buffalo Democrat said she’s waiting to hear back from the committee counsel and her local police chief.

She acknowledged most police unions and departments will probably be against it.

On the other hand, it could help departments weed out some officers who aren’t performing as well, help citizens feel more comfortable and improve police-community relations, Peoples-Stokes said. “I’m thinking we’ll probably put something in.”

Assembly member Rodneyse Bichotte of Brooklyn supports it but is weighing the best approach, whether to repeal the exemption or revise it, spokesman Ryan Merola said.

(AP)