Behind the Badge, a team of reporters working with MuckRock and New York Focus, has drawn upon the so-called “Brady disclosure” process to obtain many of over 20,000 pages of police disciplinary files.

Until the 2020 repeal of section 50-a of New York’s Civil Rights Law, police misconduct records in the state were generally shielded from public disclosure. Even after this repeal, many police agencies have fought to keep these files hidden. The Behind the Badge team employed a novel records requesting process combining local district attorney’s office files with police department and city, town, county and state offices. We’re releasing the records received, investigating the trends we unearth and helping both the public and other reporters make use of the documents.