The NYPD Is Leaking Like A Sieve

The New York Police Department has really been going the extra mile lately to keep us criminal justice writers supplied with material, and for that I thank them.

There was the stop and frisk scandal, and the recent sentencing of the Rikers guard who nearly beat one of his charges to death and, my favorite, the story of Adrian Schoolcraft—a whistle blower who recorded the goings on in his precinct and revealed that crimes were regularly being downgraded, or simply not recorded, in his station.

Now Schoolcraft has company. Another officer in Schoolcraft's precinct (the 81st) decided to support him, and went into a precinct supervisors' meeting wired.

The biggest gotcha on this new tape is hard proof of the biggest public secret in NYC: That the department enforces quotas on its officers, demanding that they write specific numbers of citations each week.

Between Schoolcraft's revelation that serious crimes are being ignored, and this new officer's (the source of the tapes has remained anonymous) proof that minor, revenue raising non-crimes are being prioritized, I think it's safe to wonder out loud: How much time, exactly, is the 81st spending on tasks that might actually benefit the community they are supposed to be serving?

It has long been claimed that the NYPD enforces citation quotas, but the department always vigorously denies the claim. Unsurprisingly, even with this new tape, they are maintaining their denial.

Which just doesn't pass the laugh test, because this new recording has a captain instructing his supervisors:

If day tours contributed with five seat belts and five cellphones a week, five double-parkers and five bus stops a week, O.K.

Your goal is five in each of these categories, not a difficult task to accomplish on Monday ... If it’s not accomplished by Monday, you’ve got to follow up with it on Tuesday. But there’s no reason it can’t be done by Thursday.

The supervisor then finishes with a nice, only slightly veiled, threat:

I really don’t have a problem firing people ... I don’t need to carry you. So that’s the attitude that you’ve got to sell to the cops.

The as-yet-unnamed source of the tapes began recording quite a while ago, and has only released one tape so far. One hopes more good material will follow and the NYPD will finally get a real house cleaning -- though I kind of doubt it because that doesn't seem like the the direction these revelations are pushing the department.

Maybe the most telling bit of the tape—which was recorded after Adrian Schoolcraft went public—was an Inspector telling the assembled men to keep an eye out for “rats coming out of here wearing tape recorders.” Which, to say the least, is not the healthiest lesson he could have gleaned from the scandal then unfolding in his station house.

Image Credit: Bob B Brown