NYC to Appeal Order to Release Police Shooting Data

From [HERE] In February, a Manhattan judge gave the city 60 days to turn over 13 years of the internal documents generated whenever a city police officer opens fire on a civilian.

The judge, Emily Jane Goodman of State Supreme Court, ruled that the reports, covering roughly 850 shootings, be given to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which said it planned to make them public.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Feb. 22 that the police were poised to turn over “whatever the court says we should.” Mr. Kelly had touted his administration’s practice of making public each year a firearms-discharge report that is a summary of police shootings, though it does not include the documents covered in the judge’s ruling: the detailed investigatory reports done within 24 hours of each shooting, and other, more extensive reports, completed within 90 days.

But quietly, on March 21, the city filed plans to appeal the ruling to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court.

“Respondents seek reversal of this judgment on the grounds that the firearms discharge incident reports comprise personnel records which are exempt from disclosure under the state’s Freedom of Information Law,” city lawyers wrote in a “preargument statement.”

The city argued that those personnel records “could not be adequately protected by the proposed redactions” ordered by the judge. The reports, the city said, were “designed to elicit the candid expression of police officers’ views, and these assessments are too closely intertwined with the factual data to permit disclosure even in the redacted form.”

The city added that making the reports public would “reveal nonroutine criminal investigation procedures”; constitute an “invasion of privacy”; “interfere with judicial proceedings in ensuing civil litigation and with law enforcement investigations”; and “discourage civilian witnesses from co-operating in criminal investigations.”

Asked about the city’s motion, Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties group, said: “Though disappointed, we are not surprised by this appeal given Commissioner Kelly’s ironclad commitment to secrecy. We are confident, however, that the appeal will fail and that these important reports about N.Y.P.D. shootings ultimately will see the light of day.”

City Law Department officials declined to comment on the appeal because it is a pending legal matter.

Policing and At-Risk Children

City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. of Queens, chairman of the Council’s public safety committee invited the Police Department to a hearing next week to address the myriad issues that come up when police officers interact with broken families.

The title of the hearing sums up its aim: “Oversight: Children of Incarcerated Parents.”

The hearing was being jointly sponsored by the committee on youth services and the committee on general welfare. Lawmakers said they were looking forward to the testimony that would come from the hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday at 250 Broadway, and from listening to different perspectives of people, including police officers.

Some lawmakers specifically wanted to know about the protocol for arresting adults when children are present. Do you summon the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services? Or do you simply sequester the minors in another room? When an adult is removed from a household, what happens to the children left behind?

But then word came that no police officials would be present to speak and answer questions.

It has created somewhat of a sore spot.

“It makes it much more difficult for the Council to do its charter-mandated job of oversight of police policies concerning arrests while children are present if the police do not show up and testify,” Mr. Vallone wrote in an e-mail provided by an aide.

Asked to provide any rationale from the police, either about their notifying the City Council that they would not attend the hearing or explaining why, the aide said that the Council committee did not “have anything to pass along.”

Lessons to Be Learned

Robert J. Louden served for 21 years in the New York Police Department. For six of those years, he was the commanding officer of the force’s elite Hostage Negotiation Team. More recently, he has taught at several police academies and currently teaches criminal justice and homeland security at Georgian Court University in Lakewood, N.J.

From his position there, he has kept an eye on the volatile and emotional encounter in Nassau County last month in which two people were fatally shot.

Questions have lingered about the episode, in which Nassau County police officers shot and killed a 21-year-old man after, they said, he lunged at them with knives in his parents’ home in Massapequa Park, and then a Nassau County police officer, Geoffrey J. Breitkopf, who was in plain clothes and carrying a rifle, was fatally shot by Officer Glen Gentile of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police. Further complicating matters, a retired New York City police sergeant was at the scene.

Dr. Louden took it all in and wrote a letter to The New York Times, excerpted here:

Just three months into 2011 the country has experienced a near epidemic of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty; local, state, federal. All of these events are tragic but to also have an officer dead as a result of mistaken identity or inadvertent friendly fire is even more dreadful.

The convergence of events that day presents a unique teachable moment for law enforcement agencies throughout the country which collectively employ at least three quarters of a million officers. … In the past, police departments have studied and learned from these types of tragedies and instituted or reinforced various scene control and identifier policy and procedures designed to minimize the probability of a similar incident.

There will undoubtedly be comprehensive investigations by the police departments involved and by the prosecutor’s office. These steps are necessary and will require time to develop. Later there will almost certainly be tort litigation. More time past the terrible event. Of necessity, while each of the criminal and civil processes unfold, minimal factual information will be forthcoming from official sources. The passage of time, it is said, fogs memory. The potential variety of lessons to be taught are too important to wait until the legal process is complete and more direct factual information is made available.