ProPublica examined more than 1,000 daily snapshots of the database’s contents and found that, since the fall of 2022, the number of discipline cases that appear in the database has fluctuated often and wildly. Try to pull up the record for a disciplined officer and the site sometimes spits back, “This officer does not have any applicable entries.”
Since May 2021, at least 88% of the disciplinary cases that once appeared in the data have gone missing at some point, though some were later restored. As of this week, 54% of cases that had at one point been in the system were missing.
The repeal of Section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law in June 2020, which had shielded all police discipline records from public view, was intended to offer the public, including journalists, a way to scrutinize the quality of police departments’ self-policing.
ACAB
These missing cases have included Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, the force’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, and six deputy chiefs whose assignments include the department’s transit bureau and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The allegations against these high-ranking officers include being “discourteous” to a suspect, drinking while on duty, improper use of department property, and wrongful searches, frisks and uses of force.
In the chief of department’s case, Maddrey was docked 45 vacation days over a 2015 incident in which he impeded internal affairs officials who were investigating an altercation with an ex-lover and fellow officer. The incident ended with the officer brandishing a gun at Maddrey. When a reporter looked up Maddrey’s discipline record on Wednesday, the department’s system reported no disciplinary cases against him.
[Bolding added]
Imagine how it would go if some NYPD officers walked into a situation where two people who weren’t cops (or friends or cops) were having a breakup fight and one brandished a firearm at the other
