NYC police union sues CCRB over release of unsubstantiated officer complaints
New York City's largest police union is suing the watchdog agency that investigates allegations of officer misconduct, saying the Civilian Complaint Review Board has stigmatized officers by sharing "inflammatory" records related to unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, bias-based policing and lying.
The Police Benevolent Association is urging the CCRB to redact officers' identifying information when it turns over records related to these three categories of misconduct, if the officers were not found guilty of wrongdoing. It's also asking the agency to implement a process for officers to clear their names before these types of unsubstantiated complaints are disclosed.
The lawsuit specifically takes aim at 50-a.org, a website that draws from various datasets and public records to share information about members of the NYPD, including their position in the department, complaints they have faced, disciplinary history and lawsuits filed against them.
The suit alleges that when the CCRB shares unredacted records through Freedom of Information Law requests, they often end up on the website, "regardless of the lack of veracity of the accusations."
"CCRB's under-the-table collusion with anti-police activists to smear cops with false complaints is not only unfair and unconstitutional - it is a calculated effort to end proactive enforcement and drive cops away from the job," PBA President Patrick Hendry said in a statement. "CCRB has admitted that these baseless allegations will destroy a cop's career and life outside of work, yet the agency still made the deliberate choice to dump them into public view."
Dakota Gardner, a spokesperson for the CCRB said in a statement that the agency's investigations are "complete, thorough and impartial."
"The agency continually reviews all applicable laws and regulations regarding the public release of its records, including disciplinary histories of members of service, to ensure it is fully compliant," he said.
The CCRB is a city agency that operates independently from the police department to review allegations of misconduct in several categories and recommend discipline when investigators find evidence of a policy violation. The watchdog group investigates complaints of excessive force, discourtesy, offensive language and abuse of authority. The abuse of authority category has more recently expanded to include allegations of sexual misconduct, racial bias or profiling, and false official statements.
The police union argues those three particular types of allegations are especially harmful to officers' reputations and should only be disclosed when investigators find them guilty of misconduct.
CCRB Executive Director Jonathan Darche said at a board meeting in October that the agency does not specify in its public datasets when unsubstantiated abuse of authority complaints pertain to sexual misconduct, racial profiling or untruthful statements, because those types of allegations are "very prejudicial to the character of the officer. But he said the agency does not take those same privacy measures when releasing data pursuant to a court order or public records request.
"If we get a [Freedom of Information Law] request for a [district attorney's] office or another party, we do not change the characterization," Darche said, according to meeting minutes.
He said criminal defendants and prosecutors, for instance, should be allowed to know if an officer involved in a trial has been accused of lying.
The PBA, on the other hand, argues that disclosing these types of unsubstantiated allegations is "defamatory" and makes them available to "employers, landlords, educational institutions, banks and the public at large," without giving officers a process to challenge or remove them. The union alleges members of the public "can and do fabricate accusations against officers," including to distract from their own criminal conduct, and notes there's no penalty for making false civilian complaints.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block the watchdog agency from sharing unredacted, unsubstantiated complaints for these three categories of allegations to protect officers' constitutional rights.
This story has been updated with additional information and a comment from a spokesperson for the CCRB.
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