Transparency is Critical to Accountability

For far too long, a state law known as police secrecy law 50-a kept law enforcement misconduct records shrouded in secrecy and withheld from the public. Following the repeal of 50-a on June 12, 2020, state and city agencies started disclosing some misconduct records. By making these many forms of misconduct records accessible in one place, the Cop Accountability Project is providing members of the public with crucial information needed to help achieve meaningful accountability.

How to Use This Data

LELU users are responsible for determining whether the results returned represent the officer in question. The various misconduct sources housed in LELU vary in the extent to which unique identifiers are provided for each individual law enforcement officer. 

For NYPD officers, the only stable and unique identifier of police officers is “Tax ID”, which is not consistently available from all sources of misconduct records. Badges/shield numbers, precincts, and officer names are subject to change and cannot be considered reliable identifiers. This is why LELU does not attempt to link records together by creating a single “profile” page for individual law enforcement officers.