Suffolk PBA joins NYC rally against police doxxing and harassment

Suffolk County’s police unions will be on the City Hall steps in New York City at noon Thursday, joining a statewide rally to press lawmakers to confront social-media harassment, doxxing and other online targeting of officers and their families. The Suffolk County PBA and Suffolk Superior Officers Association are part of a push that links officer safety to public accountability at a time when Long Island’s two major police departments rank among the largest local law-enforcement agencies in the United States, yet have also faced criticism for some of the weakest oversight in the country.

The legislative target is clear. Assembly bill A4609, referred to codes on Jan. 7, 2026, would create the crime of doxing a police officer or a peace officer. Assembly bill A513 and Senate bill S112 are also active in the 2025-2026 session and would criminalize doxing of police, peace or state officers when a person makes restricted personal information public with the intent to threaten, intimidate or facilitate violence. The pattern is not new: similar bills were introduced in the 2019-2020, 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 sessions, showing Albany has been circling the issue for years.

Supporters of the new bills argue that doxxing deserves its own offense because exposure of personal data can escalate quickly into real-world danger. Critics have a counterpoint already embedded in state law: Penal Law Section 240.30 already covers aggravated harassment in the second degree, including electronic threats sent by computer or other electronic means when the sender intends to cause fear of physical harm or property damage. That is where the line is being drawn in this fight, between protecting officers from targeted intimidation and preserving room for scrutiny of public officials and institutions.

The rally also fits a broader Suffolk labor strategy. The PBA recently listed another public demonstration, a rally on April 3 at Suffolk County Community College’s Grant Campus to fix Tier 5 and 6, underscoring how often the union turns to public pressure. Its latest public safety message lands against the backdrop of Suffolk’s 2021 reform deal, which cleared the way for body cameras on 1,600 of the department’s 2,400 officers and added civilian oversight and mental-health response measures. In Suffolk, the new rally turns an online-safety complaint into a larger argument about how much visibility police should face, and what protections they should receive in return.