A federal judge has allowed Brooklyn police reform advocate Dana Rachlin's lawsuit against the NYPD to move forward, rejecting the city's bid to throw out her claims that department officials leaked details of her 2017 sexual assault to retaliate against her. Rachlin, who reported the assault to police that year, alleges she has spent two years locked in a legal fight with the city over what she says was a coordinated campaign to expose and humiliate her using confidential case files.
U.S. District Judge Frederic Block sided with Rachlin on several counts in a July 20 ruling, as reported by the Brooklyn Eagle. The judge allowed two municipal-liability theories to proceed: one built on claims that the NYPD deliberately failed to stop an organized effort to leak her confidential file, and another centered on what her attorneys call untraceable “ghost access” to sensitive case records, according to The Sanders Firm, P.C. Block dismissed only a failure-to-train claim, leaving the core of Rachlin's Monell claim intact.
A Monell claim allows a person to hold a government agency or municipality accountable for a policy that violates constitutional rights, and Rachlin is using that legal mechanism to argue the city's inaction amounted to an unwritten policy. Her lawsuit names former NYPD officials Jeffrey Maddrey, Kaz Daughtry and John Chell, according to the Eagle's reporting. MK Kaishian, Rachlin's attorney, said ghost access to case files offers cover for “retaliation, stalking, political favors and interference with investigations,” per the same account.
A Relationship With Police That Soured
Rachlin's history with the NYPD predates her current legal fight by years. She founded NYC Together in 2015, a grassroots juvenile justice group that worked with Brooklyn precincts to divert neighborhood youth from the criminal justice system, running pilot programs in North Brooklyn precincts including the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, according to the New York City Ferry Service. She worked with NYPD officers at several Brooklyn precincts before her relationship with department leadership fractured.
That relationship soured after 2020, when Rachlin became increasingly critical of NYPD policing methods amid the heavy-handed tactics the department used during COVID-19 lockdowns and Black Lives Matter protests, including an incident in which an officer shoved a female protester to the ground, per the Eagle's reporting. Around that time she co-founded We Build the Block with the late actor Michael K. Williams, a North Brooklyn public health and safety group focused on street-level violence interruption as an alternative to traditional policing, according to Greenpointers.
Maddrey's Role in the 2017 Assault Case
The lawsuit's roots trace back to 2017, when Rachlin was sexually assaulted and Jeffrey Maddrey, then a high-ranking NYPD official, met her at a hospital afterward. Maddrey persuaded Rachlin to file a police report and assigned Kaz Daughtry, then a detective, to investigate her assault, the Eagle reports. Rachlin participated in a recorded controlled call with the alleged assailant but ultimately decided not to proceed with the investigation, and she says Maddrey warned her there would be “a lot of blow back.”
Years later, anonymous letters containing confidential information about her 2017 assault investigation began circulating, falsely claiming Rachlin had lied about being raped. Those letters were distributed inside a secure locker room at the 61st Precinct in Sheepshead Bay, according to the Eagle. Rachlin says she was barred from entering precinct station houses where she had once worked, and that she was retraumatized by NYPD members using her private information to retaliate against her.
The Ghost Access Question
Central to Rachlin's case is her claim that NYPD case files, while password protected, remain vulnerable to what a law enforcement source described to her and her attorney as “ghost access” or “no-peek access” — a way of viewing sensitive records without leaving an identifiable trace. NYPD policy requires immutable audit logs whenever its case management system is queried and mandates that files be used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes or official NYPD business, per the Eagle's reporting.
Rachlin and her attorneys obtained the access log to her sexual assault complaint through a freedom of information lawsuit, which showed dozens of reviews of her case by Special Victims Unit and oversight-unit officers. Notably, the log did not include the name of a high-ranking officer Rachlin says she personally watched access her file. The city has denied Rachlin's allegations and claims about ghost access to NYPD files, the Eagle notes, and Rachlin's amended lawsuit now seeks both a policy restricting access to sensitive information and an end to the alleged ghost access itself.
Maddrey's Downfall and Federal Scrutiny
Maddrey resigned as NYPD Chief of Department in late 2024 after a former subordinate accused him of coercing sexual favors in exchange for $200,000 in overtime pay, an allegation Hoodline covered in a December 2024 report on his exit. An Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded Maddrey violated department policy by failing to report Rachlin's comments to him. He has not been charged with any crimes, though federal agents raided his home twice as the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York executed search warrants across the city in June as part of a bribery and corruption investigation, according to CBS News.
In June, Maddrey sued the city over its refusal to pay his attorney fees. That followed a March decision by city attorneys to stop representing him: Corporation Counsel Steven Banks informed Maddrey the city was revoking his taxpayer-funded legal defense in four civil lawsuits under General Municipal Law § 50-k after Internal Affairs concluded he broke department rules and gave misleading statements during his representation review, according to Patch. Hoodline previously reported on the city's related decision to cut Tim Pearson's legal funding, after city invoice records showed New York City had already paid more than $622,000 to private law firm Wilson Elser to defend Pearson before Banks cut off that funding as well.
Co-Defendants Moved On, Case Moves Forward
The other named co-defendants in Rachlin's suit have continued to rise through public safety roles since the alleged retaliation began. Kaz Daughtry, who served as Maddrey's driver early in his career and was mentored by him, became deputy police commissioner and then Deputy Mayor for Public Safety in March 2025, before being named CISA Region 2 Regional Director in July, according to HSToday. John Chell, meanwhile, was appointed NYPD Chief of Department following Maddrey's resignation and served in that role until his October 2025 retirement, when Chief Michael LiPetri stepped in as interim chief, a transition Hoodline detailed in its report on Chell's retirement.
Legal experts point to a 2025 Second Circuit ruling in Chislett v. New York City Department of Education as relevant precedent, since it established that municipal policy under Monell can be shown through institutional inaction or constructive acquiescence by senior officials, without requiring proof that top brass personally carried out unconstitutional acts. Nicholas Paolucci, a city Law Department spokesperson, declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, and an NYPD spokesperson did not return multiple requests for comment, per the Eagle. Steven Banks, now New York City's corporation counsel, filed a response to Rachlin's amended complaint on August 3, and Rachlin and city lawyers are due back in court on September 30.
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