-GOV. KATHY HOCHUL AND ATTORNEY GENERAL LETITIA JAMES WORKING TOGETHER TO STYMIE PUBLIC ACCESS TO POLICE DISCIPLINARY RECORDS

-ONE ALLEGEDLY CORRUPT TOP NYPD COP WAS IN CHARGE OF INVESTIGATING CORRUPTION

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A top NYPD cop in charge of investigating official corruption was himself corrupt, allegedly.

But the public may never know for sure because the NYPD is still hiding its officers' disciplinary records—three years after the State legislature repealed a 44-year-old law blocking access.

The NYPD is not alone. Scores of police departments across New York continue to deny the public access to disciplinary records, despite repeal of the old law, called "50-a."

These include the State Police and the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, both controlled by Gov. Kathy Hochul and defended by Attorney General Letitia James in court.

"The State's position in these cases is not to release these records," Bobby Hodgson, supervising attorney at the NYCLU, told The Free Lance.

Hodgson is directing a state-wide legal campaign for public access to police disciplinary records, including against the State Police and DOCCS.

"This is Hochul. This is James," Hodgson added. "The buck stops with them."

The Free Lance invited both Hochul and James to respond. Neither did.

"Ten percent of the cops in New York City are absolutely corrupt, 10 percent are absolutely honest, and the other 80 percent—they wish they were honest,” whistle-blowing NYPD officer Frank Serpico famously charged when he alleged widespread corruption in the NYPD in 1970. 

Crooked cops "fall into two categories: 'meat-eaters' and 'grass-eaters," New York City's Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption found when it confirmed Serpico's allegations two years later in 1972. Meat-eaters aggressively exploit their official power for personal profit. Grass-eaters "simply accept the payoffs that happenstances of police work throw their way." Meat-eaters get front-page headlines if caught, but only "represent a small percentage of all corrupt policemen." 

Grass-eaters are the malignant "heart of the problem," the Knapp commission concluded. "Their great numbers tend to make corruption respectable."

Four years later, police unions convinced lawmakers in Albany to enact a new state law, called 50-a. The law blocked New Yorkers from knowing the disciplinary histories of police officers. In effect, the law restricted the public from learning about corruption that, in officials' eyes, didn't warrant criminal prosecution—along with its mandatory, public disclosures.

50-a was law for 44 years. Judges interpreted it liberally. Courts dramatically expanded it to cover almost all police personnel records—even anonymized ones without names. When it came to police records, 50-a made New York "more secretive than any other state in the nation," the New York Bar Association concluded in a 2020 report.

Triggered by the unjustified NYPD killing of Eric Garner in 2014, police accountability activists began pushing lawmakers to repeal 50-a. The public deserved and needed to have access to the records to hold police accountable, they said. 

50-a blocked Valerie Bell from finding out about the NYPD officers who gunned down her unarmed 23-year-old son, Sean Bell, in a hail of 50 bullets the night before his planned Nov. 2006 wedding. 

"Today because 50-a has been expanded through politics and case law, families cannot even get the most basic details about the officers who have killed our loved ones," Bell testified at a 2019 legislative committee hearing. 

"Like their names," Bell explained, "and if they are still patrolling our streets." 

State Senator Jamaal Bailey and Assembly Member Danny O'Donnell both sponsored legislation to repeal 50-a in their respective houses of New York's bi-cameral legislature. They failed to gather the support needed five years in a row.

Then came a popular uprising demanding police accountability in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. Even celebrities—including Rhianna, Mariah Carey, Arianna Grande and the Jonas Brothers—added their voices to a grassroots chorus calling for repeal of 50-a. Lawmakers suddenly had the votes. They passed a package of police reform legislation including repeal of 50-a. Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bills into law.

"We have passed some tremendous legislation because the moment is now," Andrea Stewart-Cousins, State Senate Majority Leader and President, said during a joint June 12 news conference with Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

Still, the repeal of 50-a and other police reforms, Stewart-Cousins acknowledged, was only a "beginning." It's "a move to bring justice to a system that has long been unjust."

Police unions fought a losing rear-guard legal battle against the new law.

Raymond S. Festino was "born and raised in Jersey City, NJ," according to a public Facebook post from 2014. He joined the NYPD in 1995 and purchased a house in West Orange, New Jersey in 1998, according to public records. He married in 2001 and had one child, a daughter. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hudson River, in New York, where he worked, Festino rose up through the NYPD's ranks. 

Festino was made Deputy Inspector by former Commissioner Bill Bratton and put in charge of all South Brooklyn detectives in 2016. He was detailed to the City's Department of Investigation a year later, according to Diane Struzzi, DOI's Director of Communication. The state legislature even celebrated the occasion with a special resolution. 

Festino's job as DOI investigator was to ferret out corrupt public officials, including crooked cops. DOI is "the City's independent inspector general," its website says. It investigates "fraud, corruption and other illegal activities by City employees." Its "strategy attacks corruption comprehensively through systemic investigations." Its work leads "to arrests" and improvements in "the way the City operates and delivers services to all New Yorkers."

Any system is only as good as the people in it. Kompromat , like alleged wrongdoing, can compromise the effectiveness of any public official.

Things seemed to be going pretty good for Festino in 2022. He made a baseline salary of $185,737 and even racked-up $34,948 in overtime for a total of $220,685. He even had a city-issued vehicle, and an assistant who drove him around too, allegedly. Completing the rosy picture, his daughter was graduating high school, where she'd been a soccer star, and going to college.

Of course, New Jersey law, like the laws of most states, require students to live in a school’s district to be eligible to attend that school. Its also a lot easier to attend your hot-shot, soccer star daughter’s games if you live in the district.

One problem: NYPD rules require NYPD officers live in New York. 

Festino committed precisely the kind of official corruption that he, as a DOI investigator, was supposed to be fighting. He was punished with loss of paid vacation days, allegedly. 

He also left DOI, "for another position at NYPD" in Jan. 2023, Struzzi, the chief DOI spokesperson, confirmed to The Free Lance.

She wouldn't say why. "DOI refers you to the NYPD for your other questions."

The NYPD ignored multiple requests for Festino's disciplinary records—contrary to the state law that repealed 50-a and requires officers' disciplinary records be public.

The Free Lance invited Festino to dispute the allegations or otherwise comment through messages to a family member. No response was received.

Officer disciplinary records are supposed to be posted on the NYPD's official website, www.nypdonline.org. "In recent years, the department has increased its focus on transparency and accessibility," the website's homepage greets visitors.

That may be true for some officers' disciplinary records, but not Festino's and not, it appears, the majority.

Individual officers' disciplinary records are supposed to be available under the "personnel" tab of the website. There, individual officers are searchable by name or shield number. Once an officer's records are found, six tabs give you access to various official records, allegedly including "disciplinary history."

Festino's says "This officer does not have any applicable entries."

That's a lie. Besides allegedly living in New Jersey, Festino was accused of misconduct in 11 complaints containing a total of 25 allegations since he joined the NYPD in 1995, according to an online database of NYPD misconduct compiled from public records and other sources by defense lawyers and police accountability advocates. Seven of the complaints were substantiated.

While the NYPD's website does list some cops' disciplinary records, a random sampling of names suggests it is far from complete.

For example, Lt. Timothy Brovakos has more misconduct complaints filed against him than any other NYPD officer, according to the public database. However, none of the 29 complaints substantiated against Brovakos are listed on the NYPD's official website. Instead, the website claims he "does not have any applicable entries."

Similarly, the NYPD website does not list the records of Mathew Reich, who has seven substantiated complaints against him, the public database says.

The Free Lance asked the NYPD why the disciplinary histories of Festino and all its officers are not on its website. It failed to respond.

It's not supposed to be this way. 

"What the repeal of 50-a promised to do was change the system from default secrecy to transparency," Hodgson, the NYCLU attorney, told The Free Lance. "That promise is definitely unfulfilled."

"The vast majority" of police departments across New York state, Hodgson said, are, like the NYPD, "fighting transparency at every step."

After 50-a was repealed in June 2020, New York police immediately began inventing new reasons to deny the public access to officers' disciplinary records, a joint USA TODAY/MuckRock report found six months later in December.

For example, one upstate police department wanted almost $50,000 to fulfill a request. 75 departments denied having any disciplinary records at all. Some said their technology did not allow them to separate out disciplinary from nondisciplinary records. Many said requests that spanned years were "too broad." Still others claimed they destroyed records after three years.

One of the NYPD's excuses is that the new law favoring disclosure doesn't apply to the disciplinary records of retired cops, like Mayor Eric Adams.

Two of the state's four intermediate appellate courts have now quashed most of these excuses, Hodgson said. Yet law enforcement agencies continue to withhold records.

For example, the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision is refusing to disclose 20 years' worth of disciplinary records of Corrections and Parole Officers, according to a lawsuit filed by Hodgson and the NYCLU in January. The City of Yonkers is also blocking public access to its officers' disciplinary records, another NYCLU lawsuit alleges.

The State Police are even refusing to disclose disciplinary records despite a court order issued by a judge in April requiring it.  

"They're fighting it tooth-and-nail every step of the way," Hodgson said. "They're appealing and they're asking the judge to reconsider."

Another bill sponsored by State Sen. Jamaal Bailey, seeking to further deny police departments the ability to restrict public access to disciplinary records, is stalled in the legislature.

"It's just making sure that we're trying to reaffirm or clarify the scope of 50-a," Bailey said in 2022. "I am hopeful that we do everything that we can legislatively to make it unequivocally clear that our intent is to make sure that these records are able to be made public."

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