Chair Brooks-Powers questions NYPD on evidence upload and transfer process to prosecutors

Next question is for PD.

Can you please describe the process for officers?

To upload evidence so it can be transferred to prosecutors?

Sure.

Good morning, Chair, Council Members.

NYPD is grateful for the opportunity to be here today.

So I guess I will start on the personnel front, and then I'll segue into the technological or the production front.

So NYPD policy foundationally is that the arresting officer is primarily responsible for the transmission of material at the arrest arraignment processing window.

They are the one conferring with the early case assessment bureau that's on the district attorney side for the screening of that case, strength of the prosecution, weakness of the prosecution, and whatever additional materials.

May be needed by the prosecution at that time, right?

It is an open dialogue.

Outside of that, if there are issues with discovery subsequent to that arraignment window,

NYPD has dedicated personnel in every command citywide, numerous personnel.

There's a primary contact and a secondary contact that each of our local prosecuting agencies have a full and exhaustive list of.

And they are to be, you know, contacted if there are any issues with discovery.

or contacting the arresting officer for any number of reasons, vacation or they're just not available or not answering the phone.

And then on top of that, to a higher level of degree or escalation, there's a centralized discovery liaison unit that

turns out of the office of the chief of department under the chief of department.

They are embedded in each of the five local prosecuting agencies, and they also work hand-in-hand with the district attorneys on two types of cases, and I can get into that if you'd like me to, or two buckets.

primarily.

So I guess we'll stay on the same track of that escalation, right?

So there's an arraignment.

There's that initial conferral between NYPD and their respective, you know, screening ADA and ECAB in the district attorney's office.

Subsequent to arraignment, they don't have the ability to reach or they're not having success for whatever reason with the dedicated command level personnel, they would reach out to the discovery liaison unit.

So that would be a DA request.

So that's the first bucket.

That could be a particular request on any case.

That could be a request because there's a 180-80 concern.

Trying to meet grand jury requirements.

That could be a speedy trial concern or any number or any reason why any ADA citywide needs assistance.

The second bucket.

of cases that the discovery liaison unit assists with, and this is a larger bucket, is automatic or proactive cases.

So I mentioned that there is a discovery liaison unit embedded in each of our five local district attorney offices.

Those members of service are constantly monitoring the live arrest feed,

and there are certain arrest types or crime classifications that the Discovery Liaison Unit will assist with automatically.

They are...

You know, the more complex type of arrests that have more voluminous discovery.

Primarily speaking, the DAs, the DLUs assist the district attorneys proactively with homicides, with attempted murders, attempted homicides, shootings, non-fatal shootings, or confirmed shots fired.

Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, you know, that coincides with the 2022 initiative that OCA launched with the Supreme Court specialized gun parts, right?

So the DLUs are there to facilitate discovery on those cases in the hopes of expediting, you know, the case processing.

On that as well.

So that pretty much sums up and also robbery.

In the first degree.

So that pretty much sums up the second bucket of DLU.

Now, I know that was seem like a lot, but there's also now like a technological aspect of this, right?

How are the materials being transmitted to the district attorney's offices?

So there are some outliers.

But there are three primary transfer mediums or points of workflow where NYPD has established bridges

with the local prosecuting agencies.

So the first one, and this is...

Most foundational to ECAB, right?

Because it has the underlying initial arrest documents that is absolutely needed for comprehensive screening by the district attorneys, the DA portal.

So that transfer mechanism receives

the complaint report from NYPD, the most basic report that contains, you know, the pedigree identifying information of the incident, the time, the location, the occurrence, the crime, the allegations, so on and so forth.

The accompanying arrest report that corresponds with that complaint, who, which individual has been arrested pursuant to that complaint.

Property clerk invoices, when there's an arrest, there's sometimes an extensive amount, sometimes not so much amount of property or evidence.

that is inventoried by the police department, activity logs, and there are also any number of types of materials that can be transferred.

Scratch paperwork, anything else that may exist in that arrest processing arraignment window, the policy,

The guidance, the technology dictates that it's automatically shared with the district attorney's office.

The second mechanism is called the enterprise case management system.

That is, if you think about arrests that have an investigative nature to it, right?

So sometimes there's just a patrol arrest and it's very simple, but a lot of times, right, the NYPD has...

Detective Bureau, investigators, intelligence bureau, field intelligence officers, and other investigatory support units.

That is where their casework is documented.

Summary of the work that they do.

Attachments to those notes or DD5s as NYPD and the district attorneys refer to.

So attachments may be photographs, they may be videos, they may be additional documents in PDF form or in JPEG form for photos.

That is automatically shared with the district attorney's office upon the investigator sharing it.

Now, I just want to touch on

The first two mediums that I just spoke about, the DA API portal and the ECMS portal,

over the years, we've worked with the DA's collaborator, not only to build the medium that both sides are speaking to each other for integration into the case management system, but also for automation.

So since criminal justice reform to where we are currently, now as the materials hit the system, they are automatically pushed or sent to the respective DA office.

The DA is notified of that and the ADA and the...

Paralegal and the discovery and the support staff.

gets the notification, they're able to review it, and then obviously turn that over subsequently down to defense counsel.

The last primary mechanism or method of transfer is evidence.com.

Evidence.com houses

body-worn camera of all of our members of service and fleet camera as well.

Some of our RMPs have docked dash cams, as they're often referred to, and that, again, is sent to the district attorney's offices.

automatically.

And that's, again, that occurs pre-arrangement in the screening process, and then as the case continues.

So that's the general overview.