A federal judge has halted the public release of police officer disciplinary records in New York, temporarily turning back a state transparency reform enacted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted a temporary restraining order late Wednesday barring police departments and other entities in the state from disclosing discipline records until at least Aug. 18, when she’ll hear arguments in a union lawsuit challenging their release.
Failla took over the case when it was transferred from state court, extending and expanding an existing stay that paused public disclosure of records concerning unsubstantiated and non-finalized allegations or settlement agreements.
The Police Benevolent Association, representing New York City police officers and other public safety unions, sued the city on July 15 to block Mayor Bill de Blasio from making good on a promise to post a database of misconduct complaints online. The unions argued that posting unproven or false complaints could sully officers’ reputations and compromise their safety.
“The battle to protect the safety and due process right of public safety officers and police goes forward,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a spokesperson for the union coalition.
A lawyer for the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said the ruling is blocking the agency from “making the public aware of complaints against the people who are supposed to be protecting them.”
Matthew Kadushin, the agency’s general counsel, said he’s confident the city will prevail.
In issuing the temporary restraining order, Failla also barred the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union from publicly releasing records it had already obtained in the wake of last month’s repeal of the law keeping them secret, finding that the organization had somehow been “acting in concert” with city government.
The organization, which often tangles with the city in court, said it obtained officer misconduct complaints from the CCRB under the state’s open records law. The NYCLU said it received the records before the union’s lawsuit was filed and was not a party to it.
“The federal court has no authority to bar us from making it public, and we will contest this unprecedented order as quickly as possible,” said Christopher Dunn, the organization’s legal director.
“With the repeal of section 50-a, the public is entitled to have access to complete information about police misconduct, and we have an absolute right to share with the public the information we have.”
(AP)
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3 Responses
It is obvious this so called “Judge” is a member for Marxist Democrat gang bend on destroying America. Trump should ignore her at best or send federal marshals to handcuff her at worst.
I’d like to see the disciplinary complaints and actions against ALL government employees made public. This includes public school teachers, transit workers, municipal office employees anyone on the government payroll.
The problem being fixed by leftists is of course absurd. The public obviously has no right nor reason to access the complaint records. What needs to happen is that cops with multiple misconduct/unnecessary force/etc. reports against them should not be on the streets. For this, we need to bust the Union’s control over the hiring/firing/review practices in the police dept., not hand the records to the public. All this is obvious to people with seichel, just as much as it is obvious that defunding the police is not a solution to anything. If the city could properly control its own police hiring/reviewing, you wouldn’t have, for example, idiot cops beating up a homeless man who occupied 2 seats on an empty train in the middle of the night. If we had access to those cops’ complaint records, how would that have stopped them?