If I had Cy Vance’s job — which I probably should at this point — I’d bring RICO charges against the NYPD. From where I sit, the New York police are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to harass and murder African-Americans, and their “Blue Wall of Silence” is some omertà crap that is actually a vow to obstruct justice.
It’s unlikely true police accountability will happen in my lifetime. So instead, I’ll settle for this little ray of reform currently percolating through Brooklyn. U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein said that a trial could go forward on the issue of whether police lie about the seriousness of cases near the end of their shifts to get overtime. According to AM New York, the suit alleges: “the failure to take reasonable steps to control lying by police officers is a policy of the NYPD.”
You gotta start somewhere.
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The suit stems from the arrest of a grocery store clerk in Brooklyn. Cops claim they witnessed a small drug transaction, arrested the buyer, and then went inside a minimart to arrest the alleged seller, Hector Cordero. Charges against Cordero were dropped four months later, but the arrest generated 22 hours of overtime pay.
Judge Weinstein noted that the officer who allegedly witnessed the drug transaction has a disciplinary record for falsifying overtime claims, and has been dinged in prior lawsuits alleging false arrest.
But it’s not about just one “bad apple” cop.
The NYPD’s Civilian Complaint Review Board has expressed concern about a rising number of false statements by officers, and Weinstein’s heavily footnoted ruling cited more than a dozen articles about police lying, some linking rising overtime with phony arrests.
“As one commentator discussing police officer veracity indicates: some experts on police practice treat lying by police at trials and in their paperwork as the ‘norm,’ ‘commonplace,’ or ‘routine,’” Weinstein wrote.
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If the officers are found guilty at trial, there will be a second trial to determine whether the NYPD creates a “pattern or practice” that incentivizes false overtime claims.
At some point, we’re going to have to understand that cops lie and are not to be trusted. At some point, we have to get police departments to understand that training or allowing their cops to lie is wrong and will result in overturned convictions and severe monetary damages to their cities. AT SOME POINT, people need to realize that the cops need to be RESTRAINED, not UNLEASHED.
We’re not there yet. But this can be a start. The allegation here is that the cops arrested a man just so they could get PAID. That’s perjury, that’s corruption, and that’s also pretty standard behavior from the NYPD.
Brooklyn judge to clear way for civil trial focused on cop perjury [AM New York]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.