Attorneys for New York City told a federal judge that they can’t produce all of former top cop Ray Kelly’s emails for federal prosecutors because an unknown number of them were inadvertently deleted when he retired in 2013.
They made the acknowledgment in court papers filed last week in response to a class-action lawsuit that claims the New York Police Department used a quota system while Mr. Kelly was commissioner.
The city was ordered to preserve all of Mr. Kelly’s emails after the case was opened in 2010, but attorney Curt Beck wrote U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet on Dec. 30 to notify him that the “majority of former Commissioner Kelly’s locally stored emails were inadvertently deleted at the conclusion of his tenure.”
City attorneys have since said the deletion was not intentional and affected an unknown number of emails 3 or more years old and stored locally on Mr. Kelly’s computer.
“I can unequivocally state that I have never deleted nor ordered anyone to delete any emails relevant to this litigation,” Mr. Kelly said in a statement. “Moreover, as anyone who worked with me in the NYPD can attest, and have already attested in this matter, I did not manage the department by email.”
Suzanna Publicker Mettham, another attorney for the city, said the commissioner rarely used email for police business.
“The maximum universe of email at issue remains minimal at best,” she wrote the court.
Nonetheless, Elinor Sutton an attorney for plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said she wasn’t happy with New York’s response. “The city and Ray Kelly have a pattern of changing their story with regard to why they have not produced a single email from Ray Kelly’s files,” said Ms. Sutton, who months earlier asked the court to sanction the city because officials failed to produce Mr. Kelly’s emails when asked.
Mr. Kelly served as NYPD commissioner for 16 years before retiring in 2013.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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