NEW YORK, UNITED STATES- JULY 25: New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a news conference at the Supreme Court after the exoneration proceeding of Steven Lopez, in New York, United States on July 25, 2022. A long overlooked co-defendant of the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white woman jogger in 1989 based on false confessions, was exonerated of a related conviction by a New York judge on Monday. Steven Lopez was 15 when he was first named in the indictment along with other Black and Latino teenagers for the night-time rape and attempted murder of Trisha Meili, an investment banker whose horrific injuries became the subject of sensationalist media coverage. (Photo by Eren Abdullahogulları/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office will move to toss 188 convictions tied to NYPD officers who themselves have been convicted of crimes tied to their duties.
The cases, all misdemeanors, were tied to arrests between 2001 and 2016. The DA's office said more than half of the sentences in those cases led to defendants being fined or jailed.
The eight cops in question were convicted of a range of offenses, from lying under oath to bribe-taking and selling stolen guns.
"“While most law enforcement officials and police officers are dedicated public servants, these eight officers, who played a material role in hundreds of arrests, criminally abused their positions of power. These illegal actions irrevocably taint these convictions and represent a significant violation of due process rights – the foundational principle of our legal system," DA Alvin Bragg said in a statement Thursday.
Thursday's batch come from a larger review of more than 1,100 cases tied to 22 former cops who were later convicted of crimes.
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