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won court judgments against county police for 41 allegations.

For 38 of the allegations, the Nassau County Attorney’s office paid out money to settle the case while also barring the accuser from speaking publicly about the allegations.

The Nassau County Police Department offered better numbers n 2022. They said that from January 2022 to June 2022 187 complaints were filed and 15 were deemed founded. They also said there were 126 founded allegations in 2021 and 101 in 2021. But the police did not disclose the number of complaints those two years and offered no details for any year.

Contrast this with New York City, which established a Citizen Complaint Review Board in 1993. The board includes more than 100 civilian investigators who attempt to verify the complaint it receives.

“In many instances, the Citizen Complaint Review Board has undertaken an investigation, gathered evidence and found that misconduct occurred and an officer did, in fact, do something inappropriate and recommended levels of discipline all the way up to firing,” New York Civil Liberties Union Supervising Attorney Bobby Hodgson said in an interview with Blank Slate Media earlier this year.

The New York City Law Department also publishes a semi-annual report on misconduct matters against the police, which includes the names of both parties, a police shield number and the total payout amount if applicable. Nassau County doesn’t.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had required police departments across the state to provide reform plans in 2021 following the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis by a police officer.

But under then Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat, the reform plan did not include a civilian review board or a police inspector general’s office that would have

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Three Nassau County Legislators — Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport), the minority leader; Siela Bynoe (DWestbury); and Carrié Solages (DLawrence) — asked state Attorney General Letitia James to establish an independent office to monitor misconduct in the Nassau County Police Department after the county Legislature approved Curran’s plan. All three are Democrats and all three are people of color as is James.

James, in a letter sent to the legislators, acknowledged the benefits of establishing a remote office and criticized the county for not including “meaningful checks on law enforcement.” James said she lacked the necessary funding to establish a remote oversight office in Nassau.

But she added that “it is our firm intention that the office give special scrutiny to those jurisdictions where local accountability and formal oversight is lacking, and that certainly in- cludes Nassau County.”

Nassau has declined to turn over records of police investigations and complaints despite the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50-a in June 2020, which permitted police departments to withhold misconduct and other personnel records.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed an order to show cause against the Nassau County Police Department in March in its ongoing efforts to obtain misconduct and personnel records.

The NYCLU has requested access to Nassau’s department disciplinary records, use of force, field interviews, civilian complaints and investigative reports, among others through a Freedom of Information Law request in 2020.

The police department was ordered by the Nassau County Supreme Court to turn over disciplinary records after June 2020 within 60 days from the order handed down by the Nassau County Supreme Court on May 2, 2022. The police have yet to obey the order.

“Turning these records over is the first necessary step in having any sort of informed public discussion about what police accountability looks like in Nassau County,” NYCLU’s Hodgson said. “In a world where these records are secret, the public knows zero” about how the police police themselves.

But what about the quality of policing in Nassau County? Would the reforms supported by critics harm the quality of policing in Nassau?

The county was ranked the safest county in the country by U.S. News & World Report amid declining major crimes and increased spending on police and fire protection during the last two years of Curran’s administration.

Nassau County Executive Bruce, who defeated Curran in a campaign that blamed bail reform laws on a spike in crime during the COVID pandemic, questioned U.S. News & World Report’s methodology in ranking Nassau first.

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