from the NYPD-exists-to-serve-itself dept The NYPD’s biggest union is back in lawsuit mode. As usual, the impetus is accountability and transparency — things the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) and NYPD have been opposed to since their respective inceptions. A law put on the books 50 years ago was finally erased 40 years after its enactment. “50-a” allowed the NYPD to withhold information about officers who had been accused of misconduct. It did not forbid the NYPD from releasing this information, however. And, because it didn’t, the NYPD often shared certain info with the public. But in 2020, someone in the NYPD re-read the 1976 law and found a loophole. Well, it wasn’t actually a loophole. It was just an option the NYPD didn’t bother considering until the public had turned on cops in general following an impossible-to-ignore stream of unjustified killings of Black people by white cops, culminating in the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin .…