NYPD, Mayor on Wrong Course for Garner Case

The gnawing question ever since the NYPD stopped giving reporters based at 1 Police Plaza summaries of internal disciplinary decisions based on the “discovery” that this would be a violation of a 1976 law shielding the disciplinary actions against cops, firefighters and correction officers from public scrutiny was, why hadn’t the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association succeeded long ago in its challenges to their distribution?

A union spokesman said Sept. 9 that during PBA President Pat Lynch’s 17-plus years in office, it had sought to challenge the release of the summations for several officers, without success; former PBA President Lou Matarazzo, who held that job for three years beginning in 1995, previously said he, too, had filed objections to the policy, to no avail. All of which raises questions as to how the NYPD recently came to its conclusion that a careful interpretation of Section 50-a of the State Civil Rights Law showed that this material wasn’t permitted to be disclosed, since the inference to be drawn is that it’s been violating the rights of thousands of cops over the past 40 years by making those disciplinary dispositions a matter of public record, and that the courts had been complicit in rebuffing those union challenges.