Investigate Cop Misconduct In Your Neighborhood With New Database

NEW YORK — A strong secrecy law keeps many New York police misconduct records essentially under lock and key. But a new online tool puts those that are available in one place to help New Yorkers hold cops accountable.

The Legal Aid Society on Wednesday launched CAPStat, a database of federal police misconduct lawsuits and other information. Among its many features, the website allows New Yorkers to track how much taxpayer money has been spent to settle lawsuits against cops in their local precinct.

The database can serve as a tool for officials — and the NYPD itself — to spot patterns of misconduct and discipline cops who are repeat offenders, Legal Aid says. It will also help the general public "hold the NYPD accountable" for such patterns, which it "routinely ignores," said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a staff attorney with the Special Litigation Unit in Legal Aid's Criminal Practice.

"With today’s launch, we join a national movement including fellow defenders, advocates, and community members to shed much needed daylight on police departments and their actions," Conti-Cook said in a statement.

The public database marks an expansion of Legal Aid's Cop Accountability Project, which started as a resource for its public defenders who had to fight for the disclosure of documented police misconduct.

Those records are tough to access because of section 50-a of the state civil rights law, which says all police personnel records are to be kept confidential.

The courts' interpretation of the law has expanded so much over the years that police departments can conceal any information "that could conceivably reflect upon a future decision to promote or retain an officer," often leaving the public in the dark, according to the state's Committee on Open Government.

But lawsuits aren't behind that veil. CAPStat has information on more than 2,000 suits brought against the NYPD between January 2015 and June 2018, 740 of which have been settled for a total of about $49.6 million.

The database shows details of individual cases such as the type of misconduct alleged, where they occurred and their outcomes. There's also a profile for each officer that shows how many lawsuits they've faced and which other cops have been named in suits with them.

The NYPD analyzes lawsuits and evidence within them, but not every one that seeks money has "legal merit," said Det. Sophia Mason, an NYPD spokesperson.

"The ones that do can be valuable tools we use to improve officer performance and enhance training or policy where necessary," Mason said in an email.

In addition to court records, the database incorporates publicly available payroll information and a trove of police disciplinary records that BuzzFeed News published last year .

The CAPStat site acknowledges that the data on which it relies do not give a complete picture of police misconduct in the city. But some lawmakers nonetheless praised the database as an important tool in the fight for criminal justice reform.

"Two barriers that we face toward real policing reform are a lack of transparency and accountability — and accountability requires transparency," Public Advocate-Elect Jumaane Williams said in a statement. "I believe that the CAPStat database will be a vital tool for the public as well as for the NYPD and advocates to review, to find and address systemic failures."