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Discipline Records of New York Police to Stay Secret, Court Rules

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, discussed stop-and-frisk data in 2012.Credit...Ángel Franco/The New York Times

The latest legal effort by civil rights advocates to force the New York Police Department to make disciplinary records of police officers public failed on Tuesday in the state’s highest court.

The Court of Appeals ruled that the State Civil Rights Law, as it stands now, still allows the department to withhold certain records of misconduct to protect individual officers involved.

The legal battle over making the disciplinary records public has been raging for years, even before the death of Eric Garner in police custody in 2014 made the issue of transparency more urgent. At the time, the police said an obscure section of the civil rights law, known as 50-a, made it impossible to release the disciplinary history of the officer charged with using a chokehold on Mr. Garner.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit six years ago, called Tuesday’s decision a “terrible setback.”

“Anyone who has been paying attention to policing over the last several years around the country understands that police misconduct is a major national issue now,” said Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties group’s associate legal director.

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Patrick J. Lynch, center, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, spoke last week about the police officer charged with the chokehold death of Eric Garner.Credit...Julio Cortez/Associated Press

“And you can’t have accountability without transparency. When the biggest police department in the country has a secret disciplinary system, that just breeds mistrust and that has to change.”

The civil liberties union had waged a six-year effort to release records of police officers who had gone before the Civilian Complaint Review Board and then had a departmental trial. The suit was started at a time, Mr. Dunn said, when the police still had a policy of stopping and frisking large numbers of men in high-crime neighborhoods.

Mr. Dunn said that the civil liberties union was not seeking the identity of the officers, but rather details about how police administrative judges decided misconduct cases and applied the law in their courtrooms in Police Headquarters.

The civil liberties group won the case in State Supreme Court, where a judge ruled that the Police Department had to release redacted documents. But an appellate court overruled the lower court, and on Tuesday, the Court of Appeals affirmed that decision.

The city’s police unions immediately hailed the decision as a welcome victory. The unions have long contended that disciplinary records can be used to harass officers, especially during cross-examinations. They also argue the disclosure of discipline records for police misconduct cases could undermine the faith the public has in law enforcement.

“For more than 40 years, the court has recognized the tremendous potential for abusive exploitation of these records and the harassment — or worse — of police officers, firefighters and corrections officers,” Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, said in a statement.

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Judge Michael J. Garcia, of the New York Court of Appeals, in Albany in 2016.Credit...Hans Pennink/Associated Press

Michael Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, called the decision “exhilarating, especially in this climate.” He added, “The court recognized both the danger involved in police work and the protections intended by the law.”

Judge Michael Garcia wrote in the court’s opinion that it was not legal to release certain disciplinary records going back 10 years, including “misconduct allegations, hearing judges’ impressions and findings, and any punishment imposed on officers.”

“The statute was designed to protect police officers from the use of their records ‘as a means for harassment and reprisals and for purposes of cross-examination by plaintiff’s counsel during litigation,’” he wrote.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for changing the state law, as have a long list of judges, lawyers’ groups, public defenders and criminal justice reformers. In the past, those bills have gone nowhere because of Republican opposition in the State Senate. The legislation may stand a better chance once the next legislative session begins in January, when Democrats will control both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office.

The city Law Department released a statement after the ruling stating that the law must be amended to achieve “the transparency this administration favors.”

Mr. Dunn said protections under the law might, for example, come into play in the case of Jazmine Headley, the 23-year-old woman whose baby was pried from her arms last week as she was arrested in a government office. The charges against her were dropped on Tuesday.

“Under this ruling, we are never going to know if those officers are going to be disciplined by the N.Y.P.D.,” Mr. Dunn said. “Whether you think they should be disciplined or not, there’s no question the public should know what happens with these officers, one way or another.”

A correction was made on 
Dec. 15, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the independent city agency that investigates allegations of police abuse in New York City. It is the Civilian Complaint Review Board, not the Civilian Complaint Control Board.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 23 of the New York edition with the headline: Police Records On Discipline To Stay Secret, Court Decides. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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