The discipline records of NYPD officers have now been made public. This means that over 83,000 NYPD officers have been added into the database that the public can now search through, containing details about past disciplinary actions.
New York was still 1 of 20 states that didn't make police disciplinary records available to the public.
The police oversight agency has recently made the database public containing those records. This comes after a broad push for more transparency in police departments around the country and after a repeal of a secrecy law that kept those records hidden from the public.
The demand for transparency and call for police reform is a much needed change, as the people are funding these activities and agencies, and it's about time the public had access to the truth.
The transparency also comes despite efforts put forth to stop that information from being made public, by the police unions.
The database is meant to help protect the public by preventing officers with a history of misconduct from being shuffled between departments, a problem hidden rather than dealt with.
All information listed is going to be incidents related to the officers that have gone through the NY Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Police reform advocates have suggested that even more information should be released than just that, but at least it's a start. Now there are other states, like Maryland, that might also follow suit.