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From the
NY Times:
The phone numbers could not be easier to remember.
One is 1-800-Pride-PD; 212-CORRUPT is another.
Yet dialing these numbers can be the most difficult call a police officer ever makes.
“I’m reporting a guy on my team. What do I do? What do I do?” said Jeffrey McAvoy, a former narcotics detective who called in 2008 to report a lieutenant whom he suspected of stealing $5,000 hidden in a drug dealer’s sneakers.
“I went to the bathroom about a dozen times and threw up, actually physically threw up, before I made the call,” Mr. McAvoy recalled.
The Patrol Guide, a hefty set of regulations governing conduct in the New York Police Department, states that all officers “have an absolute duty to report any corruption or serious misconduct.” But within the department, that regulation contends with an older taboo against informing on other police officers.
...the department’s official stance, according to lawsuits filed by three former detectives and one current one, runs counter to what police officers have experienced.
Those lawsuits, and interviews with several officers who have called Internal Affairs to report their colleagues, seem to provide ample evidence that the anti-snitching culture in the Police Department remains virulent.
The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, declined to comment.
From the
Times Ledger:
The NYPD has arrested a Bayside man they claim forced a victim to perform a sex act by impersonating a police officer.
On Oct. 13, 27-year-old Julio Olivares, of Bell Boulevard, was arrested by members of the Internal Affairs Bureau’s Police Impersonation Unit on criminal sex act and criminal impersonation of a police officer charges, cops said.
Police allege that on June 16, 2010, Olivares approached his male victim in a gray SUV and displayed a gold, police-type shield and instructed the victim to enter his vehicle.
Olivares allegedly told his victim that he looked like one of his confidential informants and proceeded to drive to a nearby parking garage within the confines of the 114th Precinct, where he forced the victim to perform a sex act on him, police said.
From
AM-NY:
City Council members Wednesday introduced a bill that would require barcodes on all parking placards in an effort to crackdown on rampant abuse.
Nearly a quarter of permits placed on vehicle dashboards are fake, according to a report released yesterday by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. And more than half of the permits surveyed were either being used illegally or were forged.
Using a barcode on the 118,000 placards issued to authorized city workers would help police quickly identify bogus documents, Councilman Daniel Garodnick (D-Manhattan) told colleagues Wednesday during a transportation committee hearing.
Susan Petito, Assistant Commissioner of Intergovernmental Affairs for the NYPD, disagreed.
“A good photocopy will replicate the barcode and so that would come up as a valid permit,” Petito said, without offering an alternative solution to the problem.
The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau unit has written 30,000 summonses for illegal placard parking since 2008, she noted.
From the
NY Post:
As many as 400 cops could face disciplinary charges for fixing tickets in a widening corruption scandal, The Post has learned.
Two NYPD lawyers were recently transferred from the department's legal bureau to its advocate's office, which handles departmental trials against officers, and told to expect hundreds of cases, according to a source in the unit.
"This is huge," said the source. "That's a lot of cops all in one shot. I've never heard of something like that before, this many police officers charged in one period."
"It was a systemic thing," said another source familiar with the probe.
The department will charge cops internally in all 12 Bronx precincts -- and possibly other boroughs -- for allegedly helping out friends and family by "losing" paperwork and missing court dates. In turn, parking tickets, moving violations and quality-of-life summonses would be dismissed in court or vanish before ever getting near a judge.
Officers found guilty in department trials could get fired, lose benefits, or be reprimanded or warned.
Those who tampered with documents might face criminal charges of obstruction or filing a false instrument, while cops who took money could be hit with felonies such as bribery.
From the
Daily News:
A grand jury probe of an alleged Bronx ticket-fixing scheme focuses on as many as 40 cops, including delegates from the city's largest police union, sources told the Daily News.
More than two dozen cops are being eyed for making summonses disappear in exchange for gifts - a felony - sources said.
At least 10 others are being investigated for lesser crimes, including obstructing governmental administration. These cops are suspected of losing tickets that they had "taken care of," the source said.
"Guys are being asked what do they know about cops getting gifts or asking for gifts," according to one source.
"They're talking about indictments for larceny. They're talking about indictments for bribery. ... It's not going to be pretty."
From the
Village Voice:
Earlier this year, the Voice uncovered a troubling pattern of how the NYPD operates, relying on secretly recorded tapes to show that street cops are under intense pressure to achieve seemingly contradictory goals set down by their superiors. Years of recordings, lawsuits, and testimonies by active and retired police officers reveal that Ray Kelly's police department has been on an intense program that punishes innocent bystanders while intimidating and harassing actual crime victims.
We've heard relatively little, however, about the NYPD wing that is supposed to be watching for these kinds of injustices: the Internal Affairs Bureau. Until now.
More officers have come forward, telling the Voice that the secretive police-department-within-a-department is as troubled as the rest of Kelly's operation. To illustrate this, we will look at three unrelated Internal Affairs cases: One involves a Queens woman who says she was stalked, harassed, and impregnated by an NYPD sergeant; the other, a veteran detective stuck in a dead-end job requiring him to watch surveillance video all day; and the third, a gay cop in the Internal Affairs Bureau itself who faced constant harassment over his sexual identity. (The NYPD did not respond to detailed questions about these cases.)
Taken together, the three cases highlight several themes about the current Internal Affairs Bureau.
For one, all IAB complaints are supposed to be confidential. That rule is necessary because police officers who complain about their colleagues can and do face retaliation. But the reality seems to be that an officer's home command will find out fairly quickly that an Internal Affairs complaint has been made. Several officers have complained to the Voice that shortly after they filed complaints with Internal Affairs, their home commands knew about it and then pursued various types of retaliation against them.
Second, whether big or small, IAB cases seem to plod through the system at the same snail's pace. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to deal quickly with a minor case—an office dispute, for example. Thus, cases drag on, and aggrieved, frustrated cops turn to the courts to resolve their issues. That, in turn, costs the city more money in legal bills and settlements.
Third, it's impossible—even for the people who file the complaints—to find out what was done and what happened with a complaint. Internal Affairs investigators often don't return complainants' phone calls.
Fourth, it seems that often, very little happens with a complaint—and it takes a long time not to happen.
Finally, the system is fairly capricious, and its decisions are often puzzling. In two cases with similar circumstances, one detective might be allowed to retire without charges, while another might be charged and face termination. And because of the insular nature of today's NYPD, it's not likely you'll find out why. Police officers who fall out of favor are just as likely to receive an unfavorable assignment as face a charge—a point made by a former departmental trial commissioner now in private practice.
From the NY Times:
