Trials

Collars For Dollars: An Unconstitutional Police Practice?

Other juries will soon be asked to decide whether a petitioner's civil rights were violated through arrests by police seeking to make overtime dollars. 

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Everyone who works in criminal law, from judges to prosecutors to defense attorneys and defendants, knows that police love overtime.  A simple arrest, if done at the right time of their shift (toward the end), could gain cops eight or more hours of overtime and thus is far more worthwhile than making an arrest at the beginning of a tour.

The term used for such arrests is “collars for dollars.”  (A collar is the slang term for an arrest.) I remember distinctly how in the weeks leading up to Christmas, arrests would be markedly higher.  Police needed the overtime for gifts.  Similarly toward the end of a cop’s career (20 years in), police try to rack up more arrests.  Their pensions are based on a percentage of what they earn at the end of their years of service.

It’s not to say that all arrests are made just to bill overtime hours, but some very marginal criminal activity — like smoking a joint, peeing on the street, or running a red light — that cops might usually ignore, suddenly became must-arrest offenses as their shifts drew to a close.

Recently, two clever civil-rights attorneys, Gabriel Harvis and Baree Fett of Harvis & Fett, tried out this theory with a jury. They argued that their client, Hector Cordero, had been arrested not because he was seen doing anything illegal, but because undercover cops decided to make a bust at the end of their shift for the overtime hours. The legal team documented (and the officers from the street narcotics unit admitted) that the cops filed for at least 22 hours of extra pay that day amounting to earning an extra $1,000-plus each.  Cordero’s criminal case was eventually dismissed by prosecutors who believed they couldn’t prove it.  No drugs were recovered from him, nor were any other telltale signs of drug activity such as scales, baggies, or ledgers. (He was carrying $580 dollars, but ascribed that to extra money he used in emergencies.)

The issue at trial before Judge Jack Weinstein (E.D.N.Y) was whether police had probable cause to make the initial arrest of Cordero or whether they arrested him as a pretext to make overtime.

“Collars for dollars” is a dangerous practice for several reasons.  First, people get arrested who shouldn’t have been, just because police are looking for overtime hours.  Next, arresting people without probable cause makes cops lie.  Once a person is arrested, police must swear in an official court document called a “complaint” that what they say happened actually happened.  Sometimes the lying is incidental — like passing an arrest to a partner because he needs the overtime more or has greater availability the upcoming week to go to court.  In such a case, one cop tells the other what he saw, then the second cop swears he saw it also and “takes the arrest.”  While this is bad, it’s not as bad as actually making up having seen a crime, then swearing to it.

Back in 1994, the Mollen Commission detailed various overtime schemes used by NYPD to fatten up their salaries. Since then, the practice has continued unabated, looked at as one of the hidden benefits of wearing the uniform.

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It was hoped that a finding of liability in the Cordero case might provoke a full-scale investigation into the NYPD’s abuse of overtime similar to what Judge Shira Scheindlin accomplished when ruling that the widespread use of stop-and-frisk techniques against young black and Latino men was unconstitutional.  Her ruling has significantly curtailed the practice.

Unfortunately, the civil jury did not find the police liable, concluding that police had probable cause to make the arrest and thus did not act solely with the motive of making overtime dollars.

Still, Harvis and Fett got the ball rolling.  More cases using a similar strategy wait behind this one.  Other juries will soon be asked to decide whether a petitioner’s civil rights were violated through arrests by police seeking to make overtime dollars.  If and when liability against police is found, it’s possible a further investigation will ensue about whether the NYPD has been aware of this abuse and did nothing to stop it.

The NYPD stands warned — criminal and civil rights lawyers are watching.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

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