The NYPD must crack down on cops improperly obtaining and sharing information about sealed cases, a Manhattan judge ruled Wednesday as he ordered the department to overhaul its records-access systems.
The ruling by Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank ends a more than five-year legal battle — barring any appeal — between The Bronx Defenders and the NYPD over the department’s alleged improper use and disclosure of sealed arrest records.
The NYPD will now have to put together a list of select police personnel who can access such data — specifically for the purpose of issuing gun licenses or for limited criminal prosecutions, including probation, parole or supervised release violations, according to the court order.
“Today’s decision ensures that the NYPD will no longer flout the law by using sealed arrest records to surveil, harass, and target people,” said Niji Jain, a senior staff attorney with the Bronx Defenders.
The public defenders group and a private law firm law firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, in 2018 filed a class action lawsuit accusing the NYPD of routinely unlawfully accessing sealed arrest records — which they argued should only be done with a judge’s approval.
A 1976 state law requires that once a criminal case is adjudicated without a conviction, all records from every step of the criminal justice process be barred from public view, or sealed, including from “any person or public or private agency.”
Over the next six months, the NYPD will have to overhaul its databases, including ones for fingerprints, arrest photos and complaints, as well as its evidence warehouses to ensure only those with pre-approval to specific sealed records can access them, Frank ruled.
The department must also remove such records from all “predictive technologies… either as inputs to train the model, or as potential outputs,” the order reads.
Frank ordered the NYPD to modify or create new policies and procedures “to accomplish this prohibition” as well as to implement an auditing system to prevent records from failing through the cracks in the future.
The NYPD can still use its collection of sealed arrests for aggregate data in annual reports, the ruling states.
The list of approved personnel, which the NYPD was ordered to put together over the next 60 days, will be approved and regularly audited by the court, according to the order.
Any other cops will only be allowed to view sealed records with a judge’s sign-off.
Cops will be reminded of the restriction at roll call for the next 10 days, the order states.
Former Police Commissioner Dermot Shea previously publicly spoke out about the limiting cops’ access to the seal records, saying it would create “dangerous scenarios.”
The NYPD declined to comment Wednesday, referring The Post to the city’s Law Department.
“We are carefully reviewing this detailed court order and evaluating the City’s legal options,” Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said.