Syracuse, N.Y. \u2014 Several New York state lawmakers, including from the Syracuse area, are backing a bill that would limit public access to certain kinds of law enforcement disciplinary records.<\/p>\n
The bill would unwind one of the police reforms<\/a> enacted in New York after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minnesota that led to mass protests. Lawmakers that year repealed a decades-old law that kept police disciplinary records secret.<\/p>\n Now, lawmakers are proposing legislation<\/a> that would block public access to records related to \u201cunfounded,\u201d \u201cexonerated\u201d and pending complaints against law enforcement officers.<\/p>\n Unfounded complaints are defined in the legislation as those that are \u201cdetermined to lack factual basis and are dismissed without disciplinary actions or criminal charges.\u201d<\/p>\n Exonerated complaints are defined as those where \u201cthe alleged conduct occurred but was determined to be lawful.\u201d<\/p>\n Transparency advocates say it is important to release all allegations of wrongdoing because they say police departments have historically cleared many officers too easily. The bill would change the law so that many complaints against officers would never become public.<\/p>\n In New York City, for example, the legislation would seal the vast majority of police disciplinary records from the past five years.<\/p>\n An independent review board there has found<\/a> more than two-thirds of misconduct allegations over that time period to be unfounded, without enough evidence to make a ruling or determined the officer acted lawfully.<\/p>\n Tom Speaker, the legislative director at the watchdog group Reinvent Albany<\/a>, said it is wrong to limit public access to public records.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real problem is not false accusations against police officers,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lack of serious enforcement against abuse of power by police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaker said complaints, even if they are determined to be unfounded or an officer is exonerated, can help track a pattern of conduct.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might have an officer with 10 claims against them and maybe seven are labeled unfounded. That\u2019s something that we think the public should want to know,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause maybe the internal police disciplinary process sees it as unfounded, but the public might have a different perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n Law enforcement personnel records in New York state had long been considered \u201cconfidential\u201d under state Civil Rights Law section 50-a<\/a>. Officers needed to approve of their records being released.<\/p>\n