The Manhattan district attorney’s office sought the dismissal of 316 convictions tied to a group of New York Police Department officers, sergeants, and detectives who have been convicted of crimes related to their work. Hundreds of misdemeanors were thrown out in court on Tuesday, and eight felonies are expected to be tossed Wednesday. The reason was due process violations, said District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the New York Times reports. The convictions occurred between 1996 and 2017. Fifty seven resulted in incarceration and 132 in fines. Eight of the officers who brought the cases have been convicted of charges such as official misconduct, planting drugs, taking bribes, petty theft, and lying under oath. A ninth officer has been convicted of two counts of deprivation of civil rights, a federal misdemeanor, for coerced sexual misconduct against two women in custody. “While we hope that this moment delivers some justice and closure to the New Yorkers impacted by these tactics, the sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences,” said Elizabeth Felber, head of the Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Legal Aid Society.
The move by Bragg follows similar actions by other district attorneys. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been examining cases brought by 22 former New York Police Department officers who have been convicted of crimes. In November, the office dismissed 188 misdemeanor convictions going as far back as 2001 that were tied to eight of the same officers whose cases were tossed this week. The office has dismissed 509 such cases. Separately, in September, the Brooklyn prosecutor’s office announced it was seeking to dismiss 378 low-level convictions that relied on 13 former officers who committed crimes. In 2021, the Queens district attorney also sought to dismiss 60 criminal cases over the misconduct of three detectives. Prosecutors in the Bronx sought to throw out 250 convictions that relied on a single officer who had been accused of lying. As a result of police wrongdoings, payouts in New York City reached $121 million last year, the highest since 2018. In 2021, the city paid about $85 million.
Comments