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Staten Island DA Releases Thousands Of Records Documenting NYPD Misconduct And Dishonesty
By
George Joseph
and
Sydney Pereira
Published Aug 24, 2020
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Seth Wenig/AP/Shutterstock
By
George Joseph
and
Sydney Pereira
Published Aug 24, 2020
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NYPD officer Kyle Erickson has been twice accused of planting marijuana during traffic stops on Staten Island. In both cases, despite body camera footage, Erickson and another officer involved were cleared of any wrongdoing by the police department.
But documents just released by the Staten Island district attorney’s office show that around the same time Erickson was accused of planting cannabis on New Yorkers, the NYPD had lightly disciplined him for improperly documenting a seizure of the drug.
The Staten Island District Attorney’s Office is the latest prosecutor’s office in New York City to release internal records on police misconduct and dishonesty, following a Freedom of Information Law appeal by Gothamist/WNYC. The release contains over 4,000 pages of documents, detailing lawsuits, prosecutor notes, and substantiated findings of misconduct.
The trove of documents contains hundreds of letters, previously sent to defense attorneys, outlining misconduct findings and allegations made against police witnesses going back decades. Notably, the records contain numerous descriptions of misconduct findings and disciplinary decisions made by the NYPD itself, which differ from recent releases about civilian complaints made by other organizations such as ProPublica and the New York Civil Liberties Union. Many of these internal NYPD findings had previously been kept secret for years due to a state law, known as 50-A, which was repealed in June following weeks of Black Lives Matter protests.
Prosecutors maintain compilations of records like these to fulfill their legal obligations to defendants to disclose information that may bear on a police witness’ credibility in criminal cases. Gothamist/WNYC first broke news of these types of compilations in New York City last year, and has subsequently worked with attorney Gideon Oliver to secure the release of similar compilations from all five borough prosecutors’ offices.
Many of the records, reviewed by Gothamist/WNYC, describe findings of officers who have failed to properly invoice drugs or money taken from arrestees, voucher prisoners’ property, or who made false and misleading statements to prosecutors and NYPD investigators.
In previously reported incidents, on February 28th, 2018, Officer Erickson pulled over a teenager, and was seen on body cams placing something in the backseat and then recovering a joint from a part of the vehicle that he had already searched. The 19-year-old spent two weeks in jail based on what his attorney called “fabricated evidence.”
About two weeks later that year, Erickson was seen on video placing loose cannabis into a cup holder. At the end of the clip, attorneys cite chunks of marijuana visible on the floorboard of the police car itself.
In an unattributed statement from this past June, the police department said that “every video ever made by both officers involved in the arrest found no evidence of any serious misconduct.”
But the records from the Staten Island DA show two separate findings of “discrepancy on an invoice” for marijuana and another type of drug as well as “incomplete or inaccurate” property clerk invoices on separate dates. In both cases, he received one of the department’s lightest forms of discipline. It is not clear if the improper drug invoices were directly related to the incidents documented on body camera footage.
A February of 2020 letter sent by a Staten Island prosecutor to a defense attorney.
Staten Island DA's office.
The NYPD and the Police Benevolent Association did not immediately respond to requests to make Erickson available for an interview or to clarify how these findings may have related to the incidents caught on camera.
Other records in the release show internal notes about officers who may have lied on the stand or to prosecutors. One letter outlines a case in which an officer’s statements to a prosecutor and in court about a 2016 DWI arrest in North Staten Island contradicted dash cam footage that later surfaced about the incident.
Another letter from this year refers to a 2003 incident in which an officer “wrongfully failed to give accurate and truthful answers to questions posed to her” by a Manhattan prosecutor. The officer lost 25 vacation days as a result.
In an email, a spokesman for Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon declined to comment on the release.
The Staten Island DA had been compiling a list of officers it does not trust to testify in court earlier this year. The district attorney's office emphasized the newly disclosed documents named in these letters are not necessarily a part of that list.
Staten Island DA McMahon at the 121st Precinct in July 2020
Staten Island DA's office / Facebook
The thousands of pages of records follow a wave of historic releases of police disciplinary records previously hidden from the public due to section 50-A of the civil rights law. Last week, more than 300,000 records dating back 35 years involving civilian complaints from the police oversight agency, or the Civilian Complaint Review Board, were published in a database by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The records had been tied up in a legal battle between police, correction, and fire unions and the de Blasio administration, which the unions argued records would be damaging to cops’ careers.
A day after an appeals court gave the NYCLU the ability to make the records public, a federal judge ruled other misconduct records—NYPD’s internal investigations as well as records for firefighters and correction officers—could also be unveiled.
Mayor Bill de Blasio previously said disciplinary records would be published in a city database, though the status of that effort is unclear following Friday’s federal court ruling. City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the Legal Aid Society called on city officials and prosecutors to publicly release thousands of other police disciplinary records, which have still not been made public.
“Now with Police Secrecy Law 50-A fully repealed and the injunction sought by the police unions denied by the courts, New York’s District Attorneys should release the information they have on officer credibility issues, including reports of officers lying on the witness stand, and falsifying evidence and official documents,” said a spokesman for the defenders’ organization. “Likewise, all governmental agencies in possession of documents concerning police misconduct share that responsibility, and The Legal Aid Society again calls on Mayor Bill de Blasio to make police disciplinary records publicly available, as promised earlier this summer.”
Tagged
district attorney
bad cops
staten island
richmond county
George Joseph
George covers Brooklyn for THE CITY with a focus on criminal justice and housing. He previously worked for WNYC and Gothamist, and has published stories with NPR, ProPublica, Esquire, and The Intercept among other outlets.
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Sydney Pereira
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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