The NYPD has told a court that it can’t reveal what happened to money seized by its officers under civil forfeiture laws because its database is broken.
Responding to a freedom of information request in Manhattan Supreme Court, city attorney Neil Giovanatti said that the PD was unable to extract the information from its Property and Evidence Tracking System (PETS).
He added that technicians can’t even figure out how to back up the database, which cost the city more than $25.5 million in 2009.
‘That’s insane,’ Judge Arlene Bluth said repeatedly, according to Courthouse News. ‘Do you want the Daily News to be reporting that you have no copy of the data?’ she added. ‘That deserves an expose in the New York Times.’
If the NYPD is genuinely unable to obtain the details, that would render investigations into, for example, cops inappropriately seizing and spending citizens’ cash, difficult to perform.
The startling – and according to critics completely unbelievable – admission came after law firm The Bronx Defenders began looking into the department in 2014.
They used the freedom of information law to request data on how much cash the NYPD had seized under civil asset forfeiture laws, and how it was spent, as well as property seized.
In response – and after a wait of 19 months – the NYPD gave them a paltry two hardcopy documents and a digital copy of the NYPD Patrol Guide, it was reported in 2016.
Those documents said the cops had taken in more than $68 million in seized cash in the 2013 financial year.
But it didn’t give enough detail for Bronx Defenders, who then took the NYPD to court.
The Defenders claimed the PD ‘did not disclose the records sought, claim specific exemptions to disclosure, or certify that, after making a diligent search, it had determined that it does not possess the requested records.’
That lead to the department’s startling claim on Wednesday about the content of its expensive technology being inaccessible.
In 2012 James Onalfo, the NYPD’s chief information officer, wrote that PETS ‘has allowed us to completely digitize our evidence tracking process, which has … given us a clear view of the data in our system.’
But now the city claims that same database – created by Capgemini and running on a IBM z10 mainframe – has rendered the data inaccessible.
It’s a claim denied by Robert Pesner, a former chief enterprise architect for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and owner of computer consulting firm PC Dialogs.
‘Based on the information I have reviewed about the technical specifications of PETS’s hardware and software, it is my opinion that it is technologically feasible to retrieve much of the data sought from PETS by running queries directly on the underlying [IBM] DB2 database,’ he said.
The information he obtained was all in the public domain, The Bronx Defenders claimed.
The case will return to court on December 12, as another round of oral arguments are presented to the court.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4997774/NYPD-say-database-cash-seize-broken.html#ixzz4w34ts5mh
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It’s all on the second set of books
Yeah, and those books are under the table.
.
“But now the city claims that same database – created by Capgemini and running on a IBM z10 mainframe – has rendered the data inaccessible.”
Coulda been worse.
They coulda got ‘Pentagoned’.