Following the repeal of New York Civil Rights Law 50-a and the court’s denial of union efforts to block disclosure, the New York Civil Liberty Union has released a database of everything, every complaint made to the Civilian Complaint Review Board since 1985. There are a lot.

The records released Thursday include all allegations of excessive force, abuse of authority, discourtesy and offensive language investigated by the review board though mid-July, as well as the board’s findings and any discipline that the police commissioner imposed. They do not include complaints under investigation by the review board or those investigated by the Police Department itself.

On the one hand, the range of complaints is as broad as possible, ranging from killing to using a bad word. All complaints are not equal, and while the total number of complaints seems huge, it spans 35 years with a police force of over 35,000 cops.

On the other hand, relatively few complaints are made because most of the worst conduct is directed at people arrested, who have bigger issues than making CCRB complaints, the general malaise about complaining, particularly when it’s not easy to do, and the long-known problem that the CCRB was a nice idea, but has always been a toothless tiger. Why bother if nothing is going to come of it?

Even if a complaint was “substantiated,” CCRB’s way of saying they determined that the complaint was valid, and recommended punishment, its real world impact was limited since it had no authority to punish, but only recommend, and the police commissioner could do as he pleased.

Given all the incentives against making a complaint, it’s surprising that anyone bothered at all, which is a testament to their anger, tenacity or craziness. There’s always the crazy contingent as well, but just because they’re crazy doesn’t mean they aren’t abused by cops. Indeed, they’re often the target of the most abuse.

So now it’s all out there. What to do with it? What does it all mean?

Samuel Walker, a professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha who is a leading expert on police accountability, said the data would allow academic researchers and policymakers to identify patterns and problems.

Data is hard to come by when it involves cops. It’s also untrustworthy, since most police data is the cops’ story of what happened, and they aren’t necessarily the best retellers of their own stories of misconduct. By disclosing this longitudinal data, researchers will now have a rich source to mine.

But will it be gold? Will the data be as usable in light of all the problems that come with it? Will it be used to achieve a meaningful understanding of what’s being done wrong or used to prove preconceived notions or bolster desired narratives? It’s got the potential to be any or all of these things, and its utility will be up to the integrity of the researchers. If they look at the data for the purpose of “proving” that their desired policy goal, say “abolish police,” is the right solution, they’ll find the evidence in there.

For criminal defense lawyers, the data could be a gold mine as well. Check the databank for the name of every cop involved in an arrest, for every cop who testifies, and we’re suddenly in possession of great cross-examination material, the sort of dirt we’ve never had before. While the cop’s testimony begins with self-valorization, his training and experience, how many arrests he’s made, maybe an award or two, it never includes how many people he’s killed or beaten, how many times he’s been disciplined or called some nice grandmother a “motherfucker.”

But will we be able to use it? Will judges permit a line of cross about their history of misconduct, abuse, discourtesy? Is it relevant to the case at hand? Does it impact credibility? But most of all, is it proven? Therein lies the rub, as is reflected in the New York Times clickbait headline that begins, “323,911 Accusations.” That’s accusations, the same beasts we fight against when thrown at defendants. Accusations are easy. Anyone can accuse anyone else of anything. But that doesn’t make them real. That doesn’t mean they happened. That only means they’ve been accused.

Richard Emery, whose career as a civil rights lawyer got him the gig as chair of the CCRB, saw all these issues.

But the release of the records also puts pressure on the Police Department to change how unsubstantiated claims affect officers’ careers, he said. Even if not proven true, misconduct complaints can have a negative effect on officers’ opportunities for transfers, promotions and more desirable assignments.

“It’s a very, very complicated, messy problem that has a lot of strings to it,” Mr. Emery said. “The release of these statistics and information can be something that’s useful and it can support reform, but it also can be something that undermines reform and puts the police in the position where they cannot and will not do their job.”

Emery’s tenure on the CCRB reflects many of the problems with the data it produced. The way one views police conduct changes as one’s “understanding” of the other side grows. There have been times that it seems the CCRB is been co-opted as a police apologist board, putting more effort into rationalizing why conduct that seem horrible isn’t quite so bad, or at least sufficiently understandable as to mitigate punishment. While the members of the CCRB aren’t cops, and don’t understand cops the way cops want to be understood or believe they deserve to be understood, they also gain a different view of the police function than the guy on the street, who confuses the marketing slogan, “protest and serve,” with their legal duty.

The call for transparency has taken on a life of its own, that transparency is always good, or at least always better than lack of transparency. And on the whole, that’s likely true. Now that we’ve got it, or at least as much of it as we can get from the CCRB data now revealed, the question remains how it can be used and whether it will be used to the benefit of smart, sound reform.

As for crossing individual cops with sordid pasts, it’s likely to be a big disappointment, made even worse by knowing we finally have the dirt and won’t normally be allowed to let the jury know that the brave, upstanding officer on the witness stand is the same cop who tossed a grade school kid against a wall, knocking out three teeth, and called his mother the “n-word” for objecting. Meh, it was never substantiated anyway.