NYPD Restores Thousands of Missing Records from Officer Disciplinary Database — ProPublica

Last month, the New York Police Department restored more than 2,000 previously missing disciplinary records to a public database of uniformed officers, weeks after a ProPublica report exposed data integrity problems that had plagued the site for nearly two years.

The department also revamped the website, including removing case numbers, which will make it harder for the public to identify or track missing cases. When the revamped website went live two weeks ago, the number of cases dropped again.

The system, known as the Officer Profile Database, was launched in 2021 after the New York City Legislature repealed a law that for decades exempted officers’ disciplinary records from public disclosure. But a ProPublica analysis of more than 1,000 daily snapshots of the database found that for nearly two years, officers’ disciplinary records often disappeared from the NYPD’s website for days — sometimes weeks — at a time, obscuring the misconduct histories of officers of all ranks, including the most senior officer in uniform. During that time, about half of the cases that were in the system at one point disappeared.

The number of cases in the database has been steadily increasing since late April, suggesting the department may have fixed an issue that previously caused cases to disappear from the system. The updated analysis shows that the recovery of cases began around May 5, more than a week after ProPublica contacted the department for comment and four days before the news organization published its first story.

After ProPublica article revealed NYPD database is unreliable, missing discipline records resurface

More than 2,000 previously missing disciplinary records have been restored to the New York Police Department’s database, just weeks after a ProPublica story exposed widespread reliability problems with the system.

Police officials did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated inquiries seeking confirmation of why the cases were removed or restored. But the latest streak of steady or rising case numbers appears to be the longest such streak in more than a year. That streak ended when the site was updated on June 18; since then, the number of cases has fallen again by about 200 from its all-time high.

Representatives for RockDaisy, the software vendor that developed the original system, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A software update last month apparently removed all references to the company from the site’s source code, and the company’s involvement in the latest version of the site is unclear.

Lupe Aguirre, senior counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said she remains concerned that the database is so inconsistent and, more broadly, that the department’s website discloses only a subset of all misconduct and disciplinary violations.

“The fluctuations in the data remain troubling and reflect a continuing pattern of secrecy in how the department handles disciplinary matters,” Aguirre wrote in an email. “New Yorkers deserve full transparency into the NYPD’s internal accountability systems, especially given the department’s culture of impunity.”

Because the department’s database is designed to show discipline only for active officers, some cases involving former officers may have been removed from the data over time. But that would account for only a fraction of the missing cases. For most of the past year, at least a third of the cases that previously appeared in the database were missing.

The cases involved officers at all levels, including Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the highest-ranking officer in the department, and at least six deputy chiefs with high-profile positions. Their crimes included rude conduct, drinking while on duty, unlawful searches, frisks and use of force.

Police reform advocates, including Aguirre, have previously argued that the database issues exposed by ProPublica underscored the need for agencies to publish the data through the city’s open data program, as required by a 2012 law. The latest timeline for upcoming releases shows that NYPD officer profile data was supposed to be added by the end of 2023, but that has yet to happen.

The NYPD’s website and broader disciplinary process have come under scrutiny recently. City & State reported Friday that an administrative page on the site did not require authentication, potentially allowing bad actors to manipulate database records. That same day, a ProPublica investigation, co-published with The New York Times, revealed how senior police officials secretly hid dozens of disciplinary cases involving NYPD officers, ensuring that the cases never appeared in the online database.