Albany Police Block Misconduct Investigations, Neutering Landmark Oversight Law

The city’s Community Police Review Board called an emergency meeting that week to discuss the events. A new ordinance known as Local Law J had made the CPRB — until recently, a relatively dim spotlight on police misconduct — among the most powerful of its kind in the country, and it was ready to exercise its investigative might.

But more than a year later, the CPRB has been blocked from carrying out its new mandate. Emails and memos obtained by New York Focus, as well as interviews and public testimony, reveal how the Albany Police Department and its backers have rebuffed virtually every aspect of Local Law J, which passed with support from the entire city legislature and 70 percent of voters. The department has refused to hand over records and made others nearly impossible to thoroughly review. Officers have skipped out on interviews with CPRB investigators. And officials have stifled the board’s most powerful new tool: subpoena power.

The CRPB hasn’t been able to take legal action against the recalcitrant cops. The city legal office that until recently represented the board also represents the police department — and effectively sided with its law enforcement client, shielding the police from investigator inquiries.

With nowhere else to turn, the board has raised its issues with the legislature, known as the Common Council, which will discuss Local Law J in a meeting Wednesday evening. Tom Hoey, head of the council’s public safety committee, declined an interview request. “We are trying to work this out and commenting at this time would be counterproductive to making headway,” he said.

The police department’s roadblocks have protected its officers from the scrutiny that could lead to accountability. CPRB investigators still don’t have access to all of the records from the Juneteenth and June 20 shooting incidents, for example, while officers involved in the shooting have ignored subpoenas to testify — and both cases are now past the one-year statute of limitations for police discipline.

“It’s just blatant disrespect at this point,” Nairobi Vives, chair of the CPRB, told the Common Council in a hearing last week. “There’s no more benefit of the doubt, no more ‘maybe they didn’t understand.’ … They do not want this [law]. They do not respect our authority.”

Instead, the department has adopted a system that sends CPRB investigators links to view case files over the internet. The files can’t be downloaded, and the links expire after a brief window: normally seven days, including weekends, but sometimes as little as 48 hours.

That’s far too little time to conduct thorough investigations, board members and staff assert. Case files often include more material than is possible to review in a week; one case currently under CPRB review has more than 12 days’ worth of officer body-worn camera footage alone, according to the board.

CPRB investigators have asked for longer windows to review large case files, but the police department has often denied them, saying they need to re-request the files. But when the department re-sends links, they frequently don’t work.

The Albany Police Department did not respond to New York Focus’s questions, instead allowing the city’s legal office, known as corporation counsel, to answer for it. Corporation counsel didn’t respond to questions about the viewing timeframes except to say that the police were extending the standard window to 14 days.

That was news to the CPRB. “Just today we heard, not from the APD, but from a reporter, that the APD extended the viewing window,” a board member complained to the Common Council last week after New York Focus asked the CPRB about the new policy. The next day, the head of the police department’s internal affairs unit emailed board members to explain that “technical issues” with resharing evidence prompted the policy change.

But according to the CPRB, officers still aren’t following the new policy. This week, after asking to revisit the more than 80 pieces of evidence in the Juneteenth case, they received a link that will expire after three days, according to an email reviewed by New York Focus.

Adding to the difficulties, the police department doesn’t upload all necessary files to the internet links; investigators must inspect certain records in person. (Since many investigators are contracted from New York City, that can entail a nearly three-hour drive.) In one instance in February, emails show, the department claimed that it couldn’t upload documents because it didn’t have a color scanner. For another case in March, officers claimed that a video required a “special player,” so investigators needed to watch it in person.

Investigators can only review records in person in the presence of an internal affairs official. According to board member John Levendosky, those officers are often unavailable or cut sessions short. “‘Oh, I have to go home to my wife for dinner,’” Levendosky said one official told an investigator. “‘Oh, I can’t do that tonight,’” said another, he claimed.

In an email to New York Focus, corporation counsel included its correspondence with a police department spokesperson. In response to a question about requiring in-person inspection of certain records, the spokesperson simply wrote, “Not true.” Emails show that it has been a department policy since at least November.

Board members charge that there’s no reason to make it so difficult to inspect records — other than obstruction.

“The CPRB is over 20 years old. We have a pristine record of not leaking material,” Levendosky told New York Focus. “So there’s not even a precedent for them to be this concerned with regard to how we handle documents.”

Only about 40 percent of the roughly 160 community police oversight groups nationwide have subpoena power, which gives court-enforceable weight to their civilian inquiries. But Albany officers have routinely ignored the CPRB’s subpoenas. In June, for instance, after the police department refused to share files related to a January 2022 police shooting, the CPRB subpoenaed four officers for testimony and information.

They heard nothing back. They subpoenaed again. Still nothing.

“They’re not even challenging them or fighting them,” said Levendosky. “They’re just plain ignoring them.”

Violating subpoenas is punishable by fines or even jail time. But that requires the CPRB to take the officers to court, which in turn requires its lawyers. And until recently, the CPRB’s designated legal representation has been the city’s corporation counsel — which also represents the police department.

Posed with that conflict of interest, the office appears to have chosen a side: After advising the CPRB to issue subpoenas for records and testimony from uncooperative officers, corporation counsel has shielded officers from them.

In correspondence with the board, Franchini has pointed to a part of state law that says that administrative subpoenas need to be signed by a judge. In response, the CPRB has cited court decisions going back more than 50 years, ruling that that law only applies to entities that, unlike the board, don’t have their own legally bestowed subpoena power.

Corporation counsel gave New York Focus a different justification for why the police department is allowing officers to ignore subpoenas: Under US labor law, the office said, the officers can’t be required to participate unless they’ve agreed to it in their union contract.

(Corporation counsel sent a copy of the contract to New York Focus. When a CPRB member had asked for a copy, the office told him he needed to submit a public records request for it, the CPRB said. The first time the board saw the full document was when New York Focus forwarded its copy.)

The collective bargaining agreement recently expired; the city and the police officers’ union have agreed on a new contract, but its language is still being drafted. Corporation counsel did not respond to questions about whether the new contract will include a section about outside investigations, and representatives for the union did not respond to requests for comment.

Whatever the new contract’s terms, the CPRB may soon be able to more aggressively subpoena officers. In March, the board put out a solicitation for independent legal representation. Last month, they signed on two lawyers, the board said.