An investigator with the New York State Police helped get a friend’s traffic tickets reduced “in exchange” for her sexually explicit photos, according to a disciplinary letter from 2017.

Another stunned a combative suspect with his Taser in 2020 and held down the trigger for 33 seconds, twice the amount of time widely considered dangerous and potentially fatal.

Some officers with the agency neglected their duties; others had sex while on duty. Some used their badges to elicit favors; others to settle personal scores. Some failed to call for medical aid when needed; others lied in police reports.

The circumstances of any case of officer misconduct vary. Still, most large police agencies in New York State thoroughly outline steps to be taken in their investigative processes and have explicit disciplinary guidelines that recommend specific punishments — in some cases, even firing — for these types of offenses.

But the State Police, New York’s second-biggest law enforcement agency, has no such formal disciplinary guidelines. How a misconduct complaint is investigated, and any resulting discipline, is discretionary. All of these officers remained on the job.

Tuesday kicked off a monthlong marathon of budget hearings in Albany, as lawmakers unpack Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal and prepare their responses. The hearings are a rare opportunity for lawmakers from both parties to grill state agency heads about Hochul’s proposals and her administration’s efforts more broadly, as well as to get input from industry leaders, advocates, and other stakeholders.

This week kicks off a monthlong marathon of budget hearings in Albany, as lawmakers begin to unpack Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal and prepare their responses. The hearings are a rare opportunity for lawmakers from both parties to grill state agency heads about Hochul’s proposals and the administration’s efforts more broadly, as well as to get input from business leaders, advocates, and other stakeholders.

The hearing on energy, climate, and the environment is taking place on Wednesday. Here are three questions we’d ask state and climate officials.

The Cheektowaga Police Department implemented a new training clarifying that officers can only detain people for immigration violations in limited circumstances, following a New York Focus investigation that found some detentions last year may have been illegal.

New York Focus found that police in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo, called US Border Patrol when they encountered people they suspected of being in the country illegally or whose identification documents they didn’t trust, resulting in at least 15 people being taken into federal custody for immigration proceedings. A state appellate court ruled in 2018 that local police can’t detain people for civil immigration offenses, like overstaying a visa, without a warrant.

Most of the people arrested by Border Patrol had been charged with minor crimes like shoplifting, or no crime at all, according to police incident reports. One of them, a Cuban citizen identified in court filings as JMA, argued that Cheektowaga police violated state law by detaining him after processing his shoplifting charge — which was later dismissed — so that Border Patrol could take him into custody.