The Queens District Attorney’s Office released its list of cops who could be an issue on the witness stand Wednesday — despite previously denying it had any lineup of “bad cops,” The Post has learned.
The list, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, names 65 officers, detectives and sergeants in a vague redacted document with a column saying only “adverse credibility findings.”
The Brooklyn and Bronx district attorneys’ offices released their heavily redacted lists of cops who could undermine a criminal prosecution over the last two months — both of which noted the unsealed criminal cases that landed the cop on the list.
The Queens DA’s vague, two-page disclosure includes officers’ names, ranks and assignments, but does not note how they landed on the list. Portions of the release are also redacted.
The office also notes the record is “not an exhaustive list of every adverse credibility finding issued in Queens County,” but did not say how many officers were excluded.
One of the cops, 113th Precinct Anti-Crime Team member Daniel Connors was named officer of the year in 2018, according to the Queens Chronicle.
Another officer on the Queens DA’s list, Leonard Clarke — who has been named in more than a dozen lawsuits, 10 of which were settled, according to records maintained The Legal Aid Society — also appears on Brooklyn’s “adverse credibility list.”
The Queens DA declined last year that any list existed when former Manhattan prosecutor Andrew Stengel asked for them under state public records laws, according to documents provided to The Post.
“The Queens DA’s Office should explain why they falsely claimed in April 2018 that no credibility list existed when today’s disclosure makes clear it was developed at least a month earlier,” said Stengel.
A spokeswoman for the Queens DA provided a statement from earlier this year in which the office acknowledged creating a “database” that “includes substantiated misconduct allegations, criminal matters, adverse credibility findings and civil lawsuits” in March 2018.
The spokesperson said the office denied a request for a list of officers with adverse credibility findings because it maintained a database — not a list.
However, the spokeswoman could not say if the list released Wednesday was complied from the database.
Stengel is suing the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for the release of its list of flagged cops.
The Post previously reported on internal records showing Manhattan prosecutors disclosing credibility issues on 31 cops.
The city’s five district attorneys’ offices only admitted such lists existed this April.
Messages left for Connors and Clarke were not returned.
The Police Benevolent Association union slammed the DA for releasing the names.
“They will not stop until they have baselessly smeared the reputation of every single police officer and rendered any criminal prosecution impossible,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said in a statement.
The Legal Aid Society lauded the release but said it was just a step toward transparency involving police misconduct.
“New Yorkers should be able to rely on police officers to tell the truth, but too often, that is not the case, and officers are caught telling lies on the witness stand and in their official reports,” said Tim Rountree, who heads the group’s Queens’ trial office.
Additional reporting by Ruth Weissmann