The News

The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Tuesday sought the dismissal of 316 convictions tied to a group of New York Police Department officers, sergeants and detectives who have been convicted of crimes related to their work.

Hundreds of misdemeanors were thrown out in court on Tuesday, and eight felonies are expected to be tossed Wednesday. The reason was due process violations, according to a statement from the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

The convictions occurred between 1996 and 2017. Fifty-seven resulted in incarceration and 132 in fines, according to a news release.

Eight of the officers who brought the cases have been convicted of charges such as official misconduct, planting drugs, taking bribes, petty theft and lying under oath. A ninth officer, Oscar Sandino, has been convicted of two counts of deprivation of civil rights, a federal misdemeanor, for coerced sexual misconduct against two women in custody.

“While we hope that this moment delivers some justice and closure to the New Yorkers impacted by these tactics, the sad reality is that many were forced to suffer incarceration, hefty legal fees, loss of employment, housing instability, severed access to critical benefits and other collateral consequences,” Elizabeth Felber, head of the Wrongful Conviction Unit at the Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

Why It Matters

The move by Mr. Bragg follows similar actions by district attorneys in recent years.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been examining cases brought by 22 former New York Police Department officers who have been convicted of crimes. In November, the office dismissed 188 misdemeanor convictions going as far back as 2001 that were tied to eight of the same officers whose cases were tossed this week. The office has dismissed 509 such cases.

In September, the Brooklyn prosecutor’s office announced it was seeking to dismiss 378 low-level convictions that relied on 13 former officers who committed crimes. In 2021, the Queens district attorney sought to dismiss 60 criminal cases following the misconduct of three detectives. Prosecutors in the Bronx sought to throw out 250 convictions that relied on a single officer who had been accused of lying.

Payouts for police wrongdoing in New York City reached $121 million last year, the highest since 2018. In 2021, the city paid about $85 million.

Background

Mr. Bragg, who was elected in 2021, has made police accountability a focus of his tenure.

In May, his office charged a police officer, Juan Perez, with third-degree assault for an encounter on Nov. 10, 2021, in which prosecutors say he repeatedly punched an emotionally disturbed man in the face, breaking his nose, while patrolling in the West Village.

In 2019, the district attorney at the time, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., charged Joseph Franco with perjury and other crimes related to his decades of work as a New York Police Department narcotics detective. Mr. Franco’s case led to hundreds of convictions being dismissed across the city.

The trial, which began in January and was supposed to shine a spotlight on police misconduct, ended when the charges against Mr. Franco were dismissed after the judge found that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence to the detective’s lawyers on three occasions.

The trial was a blow to Mr. Bragg’s office. The prosecutor handling the case, Stephanie Minogue, was immediately removed as deputy chief of the Police Accountability Unit.

What’s Next

Advocates have said that a challenge after a mass dismissal is informing everyone who has had a case vacated. Some convictions date back decades.

“We have our work cut out for us,” Ms. Felber said after the November dismissals. She said at the time that she had a worker scouring databases for phone numbers.

“Nobody’s picked up,” she said. “We don’t know if they’re still alive.”

Kate Christobek contributed reporting.