Among the many dreams of those of us who keep an eye on police misconduct and abuse is the creation of a database of those police officers who engage in impropriety, a clearinghouse of bad cops. This has been tried by a number of individuals and organizations, most small and limited in their reach.
While an interesting source of information on occasion, rarely has it served its lofty goal. The Legal Aid Society in New York City is trying to do better.
The largest organization of public defenders in the country is building a “cop accountability” database, aimed at helping defense attorneys question the credibility of police officers in court. The database was created by the Legal Aid Society, a New York–based nonprofit that represents an average of 230,000 people per year with a staff of more than 650 lawyers.
The database already contains information about accusations of wrongdoing against some 3,000 NYPD officers, and is being used regularly by Legal Aid lawyers. The ambition behind the project is to create a clearinghouse for records of police misconduct—something the NYPD itself does not make public—and to share it with defense lawyers all over the city, including those who do not work for Legal Aid.
The rationale behind it is fairly clear. The NYPD conceals police misconduct under the guise of police privacy, thus depriving the public and lawyers from obtaining official information about allegations of wrongful conduct, adverse determinations and penalties. By refusing to be transparent, cops are free to deny misconduct, continue to engage in it with impunity and conceal material information that could be effectively used in court to impeach their claims.
After all, why should cops be tainted by, you know, truth?
If a defense attorney can successfully call into question the credibility of an arresting officer, she might be able to convince a judge to let a defendant out of jail without bail, or maybe even to dismiss the case entirely. Information about an officer’s past misconduct can also serve as a bargaining chip during plea negotiations with prosecutors.
The cops have such a database available to them, better known as a defendant’s prior criminal history, or rap sheet, and they’re not afraid to use it. Judges clearly find it significant in smacking defendants. Why wouldn’t the fact that cop has been caught fabricating evidence and testimony be relevant as well? It is, or at least, should be.
Naturally, the PBA hates the idea.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. But a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union in New York, passed on a statement from union president Pat Lynch, saying that “compiling a list of police officers who are alleged to be ‘bad’ based upon newspapers stories, quick-buck lawsuits, and baseless complaints—many of which are lodged in revenge by criminals seeking to punish an arresting officer—does nothing more than soil the reputation of the men and women who do the difficult and dangerous job of keeping this city and its citizens safe.”
The statement, which Lynch first issued last fall when the New York Daily News asked him about the Legal Aid project, went on: “Where is the database of the thousands of police interactions each day that save lives, take guns and drugs off the streets, prevent terrorist acts and demonstrate the concern and caring of our officers?”
Much as this is more of the usual PBA hype, there is some basis for concern. As an ad hoc collection of unproven anecdotes, there is a decent chance that the information will be inaccurate or tainted by the perspective or motives of its source. While LAS may try to do its best to vet the database for accuracy, it will be constrained to rely on information from extrinsic sources; information is only as good as its source. This is a fault with rap sheets, which have relatively strict criteria for inclusion. It’s worse when any allegation from any source can suffice.
Then there is the incentive issues. If the database gets legs, it could serve as an impetus for the NYPD to clean its ranks of bad cops, who both become widely known as scoundrels and become unusable as witnesses in court because they’re so tainted by their own lies and misconduct. That’s the upside.
The downside is that it may provide an incentive to the police, prosecutors and judges to further conceal any misconduct so as to avoid a permanent stain on a cop’s career. Prosecutors, who are hardly inclined to be liberal in their provision of Brady material, could provide even less if they know it may go straight into a database. Judges, already disinclined to name cops for their malevolent motive, really hate destroying a cop’s future. Pensions are a terrible thing to waste.
Yet, why should cops be allowed to engage in impropriety, ranging from testilying to beating people for the joy of being able to do so, without any accountability? Obviously, they shouldn’t, but is the risk of false positives somehow similarly improper? Is it wrong to mistakenly taint a cop with false allegations?
And what of the cop who is a pathological liar but has avoided getting his name on the list? Will he be given extra credibility, making his lies immune from attack? The false negative potential exists as well, and shouldn’t be ignored.
While the plan may be imperfect, having an organization like Legal Aid in charge may well save it from the criticism that many of the efforts tried by advocacy groups are unable to surmount. To the extent that a judge may wave off an argument that a cop’s name and misconduct are listed in the database of a group dedicated to a cause perceived as unsympathetic to police, the LAS brings with it decades of credibility in the performance of their duty on behalf of indigent defendants. That cred can be put to good use.
Will there be complaints? Sure. Will there be mistakes? Of course. But will there be a measure of police accountability beyond anything that currently exists? You bet there will, and there should be.
H/T Jill McMahon
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To the extent the cops might complain that the date is inaccurate, I have no sympathy. I see it as their own fault for not keeping track of this themselves and doing so transparently. They have had plenty of time to police their own. They failed miserably. So if good cops get unfairly tainted by inaccurate info, they have only themselves to blame. It is an imperfect system but it is the best we can do when he official system is so corrupt and useless.
Patrick Lynch and Bill Bratton should be the first to appear on the list. In all fairness, there should also be a list of cops who help little old ladies cross the street at busy intersections, and firemen who rescue kittens stranded in treetops.
“False positives” and “false negative potentials”,… now you’re testing our speed-limit IQs and making us dizzy. Thank god for the LAS. Too bad they’re overworked and underpaid. It is an uphill battle, yes it is.
William ain’t no uphill in everyday people. Were’s the hideout?
More please. I have particle physics and hot dogs for compromise. Whiskey too!
Are you really ready to shield diplomacy?
Who shall be forgiven before those held accountable?
I think there is a middle spread practical in the end.
How best to encourage that sane expeditious voice is perplexing.
Outside in looking for inside out?
Good luck with that.
Beware the proposition player/s.
Amongst the many dreams?
Amongst a realistic look at the chine the the ship needs one would be a fool to forget the sailors ethos in part or whole
several generations have secured.
Leap frog resonates but I wonder if there isn’t a legitimate chief or two to emerge in the near future?
IF the pendulum is heavy you are looking at a decade.
Seeing the dream.
“Where is the database of the thousands of police interactions each day that save lives, take guns and drugs off the streets, prevent terrorist acts and demonstrate the concern and caring of our officers?”
One Police Plaza? The NYPD must, after all, track such things.
One of the perpetual gaps in Lynch’s rhetoric is that cops are paid to do their job, to “save lives, take guns and drugs off the streets, prevent terrorist acts,” all without lying, beating people or violating constitutional rights. They don’t get a red balloon and a tummy rub; they get a paycheck and a pension.
Water don’t stick to a duck.
Have you ever deleted your own comment esteemed one?
You know why water don’t stick to a duck?
The Preen Gland is why water don’t stick to a duck and it gets worse ducks don’t have any nerves in their feet.
A quack is a quack. You give pay to play Pat far to much reverence for leading his flock to 20 and out migratory patterns.
Condemning the actions of the actors within such a limited time frame is wholesale impatience.
Start asking why cops are “impatient” ?
Hint: Not a thing to do with 20 and out. Humm why so impatient?
You sneer ’cause you’re privileged. Elite.
Do you know what it’s like on the street?
Ubiquitous crackheads!
A few broken black heads
are simply the price of the beat.
I would have no problem is the data were to come from legitimate sources, properly vetted and allowed due process but that is not what they want. They want any complaint to be part of this career destroying database. Defense attorney’s always scream the loudest about due process and rights for the accused, unless the accused is someone they don’t like of course.
And to the Dave’s of the world, the belief that every cop is omniscient regarding what every other cop in the universe has done, been accused of, or otherwise gossiped about is the kind of scary logic used by those who forget such databases may then be extended to defense attorney’s or others, external to the BAR associations that operate in at least as much secrecy with watered down results. Try working for an organization with 5000 to 10000 white collar workers and another few thousand blue collar support; feel free to tell us when you can even name who is whom never mind what gossip goes around about one or how their home life is. Extend that to police for a moment and you might see the impossibility of knowing what everyone on the department has done, is doing, might do, or seems to do? Suggesting it is the fault of the individual cop that his department closes it’s IA records to societal leeches looking to discredit an officer in the pursuit of money or freeing a criminal seems unreasonable.
But yes, I support setting up a system allowing people to fairly evaluate the credibility of witnesses, be they the crack addict alibi witness some of you use or the officer that did the basic investigation, remembering that the jury gets to assign the final level they believe in.
That’s about as passive-aggressive a comment as it gets.
So it’s kinda the same thing to get on a LAS bad cop database as it is to be detained and prosecuted for a crime? Let’s switch places and see if you still think so.
Societal leeches? Pursuit of money (we call that damages for the 37 years of life lost to an innocent man, for example). Or freeing a criminal, unless he’s not a criminal and just some poor schmuck who pissed off the cop?
You can’t have it both ways. You can try, but it just makes people laugh at you.
Mr. Greenfield,
I differentiate between the leeches and those who honestly represent the accused on a regular basis if that bothers you much. My point that you managed to overlook is that while those accused of a crime have a wealth of due process rights and procedures to protect them, databases such as the one proposed would not. If you can’t see the difference between the two, you may not be one of those honest defenders I mentioned.
So being placed on such a database without restriction by some sour grapes defense attorney versus a suspect who has a significant body of evidence indicating he is guilty, who is then found guilty by the jury of his peers according to the laws and procedures established are quite different. Again, I’m not opposed at all to juries getting accurate information on people, cop or otherwise, defense attorney or prosecutor, but before I would sign off on such, I’d like to see the way the information is gathered and vetted just as you would get to see reading an offense report and being allowed to cross examine a witness. You may consider it far fetched but I honestly believe the numbers of officers discredited would be far surpassed by defense attorney’s under such a plan.
And I have no use for officers that commit crimes, prosecutors that commit Brady violations, or judges that sell influence either.
This is an incredibly assholish thing to say, as I either agree with you or I’m dishonest? What sort of narcissistic fool are you that you think meeting your expectations of an “honest defender” matters?
Your last comment was borderline moronic, as if being on a list of bad cops is the functional equivalent of being prosecuted, convicted and sentenced, a distinction you obviously fail to grasp. When a cop goes to prison because he’s on the list, then you have a point. Until then, you’re shooting blanks.
We have some smart cops and prosecutors who hang out here. You’re an embarrassment to them.
You can be prosecuted for something as simple as a parking ticket with little impact on your life, livelihood, and future but put someone on some poorly constructed database that labels them as a liar, untrustworthy or discredited and they might as well sell shoes for a living since it could easily become a career ending move. Such antics are expected from those who will do anything to take the focus off their clients possible wrongdoing in the eyes of a jury but if pointing it out bothers you that much, it’s safer to say which side of the line you fall on too.
But since you want to get into a debate on semantics, my comment did not require you to accept my premise completely or fail miserably as a human, it only raised the possibility that your grandstanding and demanding others accept your own convention wholeheartedly was flawed. That you can’t take someone meeting you halfway speaks volumes too but just as I never claimed to be a cop (I’m not), I never claimed to be a debating coach either. lol
Are you kidding. It’s nearly impossible to fire a cop. There’s nothing “career ending” about it.
I’m happy to be persuaded that I’m wrong, whether in whole or part. You just didn’t do so.