Computers operating on the New York Police Department’s computer network at its 1 Police Plaza headquarters have been used to alter Wikipedia pages containing details of alleged police brutality, a review by Capital has revealed.

“The matter is under internal review,” an NYPD spokeswoman, Det. Cheryl Crispin, wrote in an email to Capital after examples of the changes were presented to the NYPD.

The edits and changes were linked to the NYPD through a series of Internet Protocol addresses, or IP addresses, which can be publicly tracked by various websites. (Here, for example, is one website that shows a number of IP addresses registered to the NYPD.) IP addresses can locate where a computer is when it connects to the Internet.

Computer users identified by Capital as working on the NYPD headquarters’ network have edited and attempted to delete Wikipedia entries for several well-known victims of police altercations, including entries for Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo. Capital identified 85 NYPD addresses that have edited Wikipedia, although it is unclear how many users were involved, as computers on the NYPD network can operate on the department’s range of IP addresses.

NYPD IP addresses have also been used to edit entries on stop-and-frisk, NYPD scandals, and prominent figures in the city’s political and police leadership.

There are more than 15,000 IP addresses registered to the NYPD, which employs 50,000 people, including uniformed officers and civilians. Notable Wikipedia activity was linked to about a dozen of those NYPD IP addresses.

On the evening of Dec. 3, hours after a Staten Island grand jury ruled not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, a user on the 1 Police Plaza network made multiple edits, visible here and here, to the “Death of Eric Garner” Wikipedia entry. The edits, all concerning the actions of Eric Garner and the police officers involved in the confrontation, are as follows:

● “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

● “[P]ush Garner’s face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner’s head down into the sidewalk.”

● “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”

● The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.

● Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”

Read more here.

The four young black men who collected a $1.5 million settlement this week from Metro Louisville for their wrongful arrests say they accept Mayor Greg Fischer’s apology.

But they reject Fischer and Police Chief Steve Conrad’s claims that race had nothing to do with the arrests.

And at a news conference Thursday in the Jefferson County Judicial Center, they said they believe they were victims of racial profiling, and that settlement has not restored their trust in the department.

“We feel like we still need to look over our shoulders,” said Tyrone Booker Jr., 20, who spent 70 days in jail.

Lawyers for the four men, dubbed the “Misidentified 4,” said the city deserves credit for settling the case quickly, without a lawsuit. “They did seek an honorable way to resolve it and we are going to give them credit for that,” said Al Gerhardstein, a Cincinnati civil-rights lawyer.

But he said Conrad should have sanctioned the officers involved, rather than just order them to undergo further training.

Conrad has said an internal investigation found that that Officers Cordell Allen, Timothy Lanham, Michael Torres and Jeremy Boehnlein violated six department policies when they presented the suspects to two witnesses on a sidewalk in the glare of a police spotlight.

A grand jury exonerated all four defendants — Booker, Shaquazz Allen, 19, Jerron Bush, 22, and Craig Dean — on charges that they robbed a woman at gunpoint on March 22, the night of mob violence in downtown Louisville; Allen and Booker also were cleared on separate charges of assault and unlawful imprisonment when the victims of another crime earlier the same evening saw their pictures on a local newscast about the robbery and then identified them as their assailants.

Gerhardstein declined to say how the settlement will be divided among the four men and their lawyers.

Dressed in suits and ties, the men talked to reporters for about 60 minutes about how they were affected by their incarceration. Booker and Allen were locked up for 70 days, while Bush and Dean each served five days, plus time on home incarceration.

They were cleared in part by cellphone records that showed they couldn’t have been at the crime scene.

Booker said he feared he’d never be freed. “I almost gave up,” he said.

Allen said he will have to return to high school to graduate and that he now has trouble sleeping.

All four said they thought they had been victims of racial profiling, despite Conrad’s assertion in a statement that the officers’ mistakes were based on inexperience rather than “based solely on their race.”

Read more here.