As more New York police discipline records are made public, USA TODAY Network journalists are delivering on investigations that expose officer misconduct and explore potential solutions that improve public safety.
From preventable police car crashes wrecking lives to bad officers wandering unchecked between law enforcement jobs, many of these revelations stemmed from the 2020 repeal of a state measure that kept police discipline records secret for decades.
Some of our latest reporting focused on New York’s police officer decertification laws, which are meant to prevent officers who commit serious misconduct from continuing to serve in any law enforcement capacity around the state.
Reporter Sammy Sussman’s probe into the career of officer Joseph
DeAngelis, who admitted to a history of lawbreaking and misconduct during a Hudson Valley police department job interview, underscored the gaping loopholes in that decertification system.
As Sussman reports, Joshua Parker, a deputy director of the Policing Project at New York University Law School, summarized the state’s decertification issues: “New York has one of the worst systems in the country.”
Sussman’s reporting included findings buried in a so-called Brady memo, a prosecutorial tool that also spotlighted the overall importance of public-records transparency in holding authorities accountable.
The fight for NY police transparency
Still, a Democrat-backed bill in New York that would roll back the landmark police transparency measure — the repeal of section 50-a of the state's Civil Rights Law — was introduced in both the state Senate and Assembly earlier this year.
That legislation drew swift pushback from government watchdogs and civil rights groups — as well as the family of Daniel Prude, whose police-related death in 2020 was downplayed and misrepresented by officials in an apparent attempt to conceal key facts about the case.
At the same time, Sussman and other journalists have continued to search for the truth about policing and public safety in New York, with a goal of uncovering systemic issues endangering both citizens and officers.
And USA TODAY Network remains committed to keep digging into these important issues and fighting to protect the public’s right to access government information that has proven to be crucial to efforts aimed at improving society.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Police transparency is key to revealing misconduct. How we reported it
