Jul 26, 2020
ProPublica posts NYPD records, bypassing judges blockade
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NEW YORK (AP) — Days after a federal judge paused the public release of New York City police disciplinary records, a news website has published a database containing complaint information for thousands of officers.
ProPublica posted the database Sunday, explaining in a note to readers that it isn’t obligated to comply with Judge Katherine Polk Failla’s temporary restraining order because it is not a party to a union lawsuit challenging the release of such records.
Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky said ProPublica requested the information from the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, soon after last month’s repeal of state law that for decades had prevented the disclosure of disciplinary records.
Unions representing police officers and other public safety workers sued the city on July 15 to block Mayor Bill de Blasio from making good on a pledge to start posting misconduct complaints on a government website. The unions argue that allowing the public to see unproven or false complaints could sully officers’ reputations and compromise their safety.
A state judge who first handled the case had issued a narrower restraining order that temporarily blocked the public disclosure of records concerning unsubstantiated and non-finalized allegations or settlement agreements.
ProPublica said it excluded allegations that investigators deemed unfounded from the material it published. In all, the searchable database contains 12,056 complaints against 3,996 active NYPD officers.
“We understand the arguments against releasing this data. But we believe the public good it could do outweighs the potential harm,” ProPublica Editor-in-Chief Stephen Engelberg said. “The database gives the people of New York City a glimpse at how allegations involving police misconduct have been handled, and allows journalists and ordinary citizens alike to look more deeply at the records of particular officers.”
Failla’s ruling Wednesday blocks the CCRB, the police department and other entities from disclosing disciplinary records until at least Aug. 18, when she’ll hear arguments in the case. In issuing the temporary restraining order, Failla also barred the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union from publicly releasing records it had already obtained.
The organization said it requested officer misconduct complaints from the CCRB under the state’s open records law and received them before the union’s lawsuit was filed. Like ProPublica, the NYCLU argued it was not a party to the lawsuit.
“The federal court has no authority to bar us from making it public, and we will contest this unprecedented order as quickly as possible,” NYLU legal director Christopher Dunn said.
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San Francisco’s woke Mayor London Breed was paid $351,000 last year – double the average city employee’s salary and nearly $100,000 more than NYC Mayor Eric Adams
San Francisco's Mayor was paid $351,000 in 2021, more than double the salary of the average worker employed by the city.
Mayor London Breed earns nearly $100,000 more in regular pay than NYC Mayor Eric Adams, according to data compiled by The San Francisco Chronicle. Adams draws an annual salary of $258,750, according to The New York Post.
Government employees in San Francisco made anywhere between $36,000 and $601,000 last year, averaging around $127,000, the data showed.
It comes after Breed performed a dramatic U-turn on her 'defund the police' strategy as she called for 'more aggressive policing' to crack down on rampant crime.
Mayor London Breed, pictured, was paid $351,000 in 2021, more than double the salary of the average worker employed by the city
She had demanded cities defund the police last year, announcing that San Francisco would be one of the first to do so and promising to slice $120million from the budgets of its police and sheriff's departments.
But Breed made a screeching U-turn and announced she was asking the city's Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the police to stamp out drug dealing, car break-ins, and theft.
Announcing a crime crackdown, she argued that San Francisco officers should get aggressive and 'less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city', as she went back on her plans to defund the police.
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'It's time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,' she said. 'And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies.'
Breed called for progressive policies that have allowed criminal behavior to make a mockery of the city's famed tolerance and compassion to be replaced with 'more aggressive policing.'
Breed said she plans to introduce legislation that allows law enforcement officers real-time access to surveillance video in certain situations, as well as measures that would make it harder to sell stolen goods.
Her comments were a complete U-turn from last year, when she announced plans to redirect $120million from the police department to a combination of new and existing programs for the African-American community.
More than 45,000 incidents have been reported so far this year, up from last year when most people were shut indoors, but below the roughly 60,000 complaints in previous years
The movement to defund the police picked up steam during 2020's protests following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
But as she called to redirect funds away from the police toward community ventures, it was revealed the city spent $2.6million on her security detail in 2020.
San Francisco spent $12.4million to protect Breed between 2015 and 2020, with the bill rising from $1.7million in 2015 to $2.6 million last year, according to information obtained by public transparency website Openthebooks.com and compiled by Forbes.
Read more:- Here's how much London Breed, other SF government employees make
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