The New York State legislature must repeal Civil Rights Law 50-a, which has been used to shield law enforcement from accountability by preventing transparency regarding acts of misconduct by police officers. The law has been broadly interpreted so that people who are accused of crimes have no access to the disciplinary records of the officers who are testifying against them.

As Cynthia Conti-Cook and I wrote recently here: "50-a is the law that prevented Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, from knowing whether the officers who killed her son had prior histories of misconduct. It is the law that the Police Benevolent Association believes should prevent body camera footage from being publicly accessible and aggregate statistics on force from being reported. It’s what shields police officers from public scrutiny at the expense of accountability, transparency and safety."

We cannot have equal justice in New York without full transparency and accountability for law enforcement. Please join me in asking the New York State Legislature to repeal 50-a.