THE FOIL REQUEST FOR RESPONDENT’S RECORDS FOR ALL CERTIFIED POLICE OFFICERS COULD REVEAL THE IDENTITIES OF UNDERCOVER OFFICERS; THEREFORE THE REQUEST SHOULD HAVE BEEN DENIED; TWO-JUSTICE DISSENT (THIRD DEPT).

The Third Department, reversing Supreme Court, over a two-justice dissent, determined the reporter’s FOIL request seeking records for all certified police officers from respondent’s central registry of police officers and peace officers should not have been granted because the records include undercover officers:

The in camera submissions reveal that, unlike the state registry, at least one police agency omits from its own public payroll database certain information about certified officers working undercover or in sensitive assignments to protect their safety and preserve confidentiality; again, the police agency submits information about those same officers to the state registry. This distinction in how respondent and a local law enforcement agency account for undercover officers would be evident to one who compares the department’s public payroll database to the list attributed by the state registry to that agency. Simply put, comparing the state registry to a local department’s publicly disclosed payroll database could reveal names of undercover officers that appear on the state registry but not on their employer’s redacted payroll database. Thus, respondent demonstrated that disclosure of the registry could endanger police officers who could be presumptively revealed by name as working undercover, thereby satisfying its burden to trigger the exemption under Public Officers Law § 87 (2) (f). Matter of Munson v New York State Div. of Criminal Justice Servs., 2026 NY Slip Op 02017, Third Dept 4-2-26