NEW YORK — City and state politicians announced plans Saturday for legislation that would permanently bar all police officers dismissed or forced to resign for disciplinary reasons from landing another law enforcement job anywhere in New York state.
“These ‘wandering officers’ are twice as likely to commit physical and sexual misconduct,” said City Council Speaker Corey Johnson at the Harlem headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
“We simply cannot allow the hiring of bad apples and people convicted of crime,” he said.
Johnson, joined by City Council member Francisco Moya and state Sen. Brian Benjamin, said the bill will be proposed in both the city and the state.
“This will be joint legislation with a very simple rule: If you are a police officer and you were fired in your jurisdiction, you cannot get another job as a police officer anywhere in this state,” said Benjamin.
“We need to get rid of all the bad cops so we can once and for all get a system where cops truly protect and serve, and the blue wall doesn’t protect these cops generation after generation,” he added.
Sharpton quickly endorsed the planned legislation.
Last month, the NYPD made partial disciplinary records dating back seven years available online for all of its 35,000 active officers in an effort at more transparency. Redacted copies of more than 200 decisions in administrative trials were also made public, dating back to 2017.
“We need a robust database of officers who are have criminal convictions, who have either resigned or been fired,” said Johnson. “We need to fundamentally change our system of policing.”
An NYPD spokesman said the department had not seen the legislation and was unable to comment on the plan.
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