The New York Civil Liberties Union says the NYPD has refused to hand over crime statistics for a Brooklyn precinct mired in a stats-tampering controversy — and they want a judge to intervene.
The NYCLU asked the courts to order police brass to release 11 years of statistics for Bedford-Stuyvesant’s 81st Precinct, where the commanding officer was transferred and disciplined and four others hit with departmental charges after a cop alleged stats were manipulated.
The litigation is the latest twist in a scandal set off by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who was handcuffed, put into a psychiatric ward for a week and suspended without pay after he claimed his superiors were fudging numbers.
He is suing the city for $50 million.
In court papers, the NYCLU said the Police Department has released biannual internal “quality assurance” audits since January 2000 for every precinct except the 81st.
The NYPD said crime classification complaints for the precinct are “the subject of active and ongoing investigations by several units of the NYPD” — and told the NYCLU their disclosure would “interfere (with) and hamper these ongoing investigations” and judicial proceedings.
But the NYCLU said the police department failed to explain how the release would interfere with those investigations.
The group's attorney, Christopher Dunn, said "there hasn't been a public peep" in a year from one of those investigations, which is being conducted by a panel of three former prosecutors selected by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. One panel member recently died.
There was no immediate reaction from city officials, who have several weeks to respond in court.
No comments:
Post a Comment