The NYPD Tapes Part 5

8/7/2019 The NYPD Tapes Part 5

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Adil Polanco recorded supervisors andpolice union delegates in the 41st Precinctharanguing him to meet a quota of arrestsand summonses. He claims he witnessedsupervisors refusing to take reports, a practiceknown as shitcanning. He tired ofthe demands, particularly the pressure tostop and frisk innocent New Yorkers.14


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Polanco, who was also making recordings to document what he saw as wrongdoing in hisprecinct, tells the Voice that many of the same things that Schoolcraft observed in Brook-lyns 81st Precinct were also taking place in the 41st Precinct in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. He claims that supervisors constantly harangued cops to hit quotas for ar-rests, summonses, and stop-and-frisks, even when it meant harassing innocent civilians

who were doing nothing wrong.He claims that supervisors ordered officers to downgrade crime complaints and re-fuse to take complaints from civilians in order to manipulate crime statistics.

It happened all the time, he says. The reason was CompStat. They know what they aregoing to be asked for in CompStat, and they have to have a lower number but not too low.

Polanco even has a recording of quota pressure coming from an unlikely source: apolice union delegate.

The Schoolcraft story was toldin a four-part Voice seriesthat began on May 5 (TheNYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuys 81st Precinct). The

series was based on digital recordingsmade by Schoolcraft of 117 roll calls in theBrooklyn stationhouse, which offeredan unprecedented look inside the opera-tions of a police precinct, and sparked arange of investigations and other eventsin the period since the articles ran.

The revelations in the series have ledso far to the transfer of the 81st Precinctcommander, Deputy Inspector StevenMauriello, to Bronx transit, and theNYPD has also opened an internal inves-tigation into his conduct. Police Com-missioner Ray Kelly replaced him withInspector Juanita Holmes, one of thefew African-American female supervi-sors in the NYPD. Mauriellos transfercame after demands for his ouster from

local elected officials, clergy, and com-munity groups. In a May 26 letter to Kelly obtained by the Voice calling for Mau-riellos ouster, the pols, referring to thecontents of the Schoolcraft tapes, wrote,Not only did officers treat our commu-nity as if it were the subject of a military

occupation, but they also were dismissive of criminal complaints made by residents.Kelly finally responded nine days later, on June 4, with a curt note, acknowledging the letter and saying he had ordered a review and analysis of the assertions madein their letter. (In the intervening period, Kelly and City Councilman Al Vann had atense exchange in a Council budget hearing over Kellys failure to respond to the initial

letter.) On June 22, the pols were joined by three local church pastors in a follow-upletter to Kelly, which mildly criticized him for his limited response, and asked for aface-to-face meeting. We believe that residents can no longer trust the precinct toprotect and serve them in its current leadership, they wrote. Vann also issued an openletter in June describing Mauriellos conduct as inappropriate, disrespectful, and per-haps even illegal. . . . The question is why hasnt he already been removed, he wrote.Mauriello was transferred on the Friday before the July Fourth weekend. >> p16

NYPDT Pes5: T eCo obo TioNAnother police officer secretly tApeshis precinct this time in the Bronx

by Graham aymanP oToG P s bY C.s. MuNCY

At the same time NYPD whistleblowerAdrian Schoolcraft was secretly recording his supervisors in a Brooklyn precinct,an ocer named Adil Polanco was doing the same thing a borough away in the Bronx.Polanco, short in stature and a native of the

Dominican Republic, and Schoolcraft, a nativeof Texas, come from dierent backgrounds,but they have a lot in common, particularlythe belief that the NYPDs obsession withnumbers distorts a police ocers job.

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Kelly also met with clergy and appointeda special liaison from his office to com-municate with Bed-Stuy leaders. But thereaction to the series exposed cracks inthe relationship between Kelly and minis-ters in predominantly African-Americanneighborhoods, chiefly over civil rightsissues and community resentment at thestop-and-frisk campaign, described in part2 of the series (Bed-Stuy Cops Ordered:Turn This Place Into a Ghost Town, May 12). In an interview last week, CouncilmanVann told the Voice hes satisfied that Kelly removed Mauriello, but he thinks there arebroader issues that go beyond the 81st Pre-cinct: I think its systemic, he said. Vanncalled on the City Council to hold hearingson the issues raised in the Voice series. Heand other elected officials were scheduled

to meet last week with Kelly and Chief of Brooklyn North Gerald Nelson. He alsosaid that two of Brooklyns congressionalrepresentatives are examining whether toask the United States Attorney General toinvestigate. Meanwhile, he says, severalstate elected officials from Brooklyn arelooking into new legislation to limit thestop-and-frisk policy. We think stop-and-frisk should be modified, he says.

A second departmental probe is said

to be under way involving Deputy Chief Michael Marinos October 31, 2009, orderto forcibly handcuff Schoolcraft and trans-port him against his will to the psychiatricward at Jamaica Hospital (NYPD Tapes4: The Whistleblower, June 16). That de-cision, a police source says, was out at theedge of the universe of acceptable orders.Marino still has an open disciplinary case after he admitted to buying a steroidcream from a Brooklyn pharmacy underinvestigation for steroids distribution. Adepartmental trial was held last Septem-ber, and both sides are awaiting a judgesruling, Marinos lawyer tells the Voice .

An investigation into Schoolcrafts al-legations that crimes were being down-graded has been completed, police sourcessay. The NYPD has thus far ignored Voice requests to release the results of thatinvestigation. While there is no officialword on the outcome of the Quality As-

surance Division investigation, policesources say that Mauriellos transfer isa clear indication that there was some

merit to the Schoolcraft allegations.A sergeant whose voice is heard repeat-

edly on the tapes was indicted, along withan 81st Precinct officer, for filing falsearrest paperwork. Sergeant RaymondStukes and Officer Hector Tirado claimedthey had seen a man illegally selling un-taxed cigarettes from out of a backpack.That man turned out to be an undercoverInternal Affairs officer. During one rolltape, dating back to December 8, 2008,Stukes tells his cops, You gotta commita felony to get fired from this job. Howsimple is that? He goes on to suggest thatcops who dont hit their numbers will bepunished, and essentially tells them to dostop-and-frisks (250s in police parlance)solely for the purpose of making a number.This job is so easy, he says. Just keepthe hounds off. A parker. A 250. Someonewalking down the street. So what? I dida 250. Whats the big deal? He doesnt

want to give you his information? Whocares? Its still a 250. Previously, the Voice withheld the names of Stukes and other

lieutenants and sergeants from publica-tion in the series, but Stukess indictmentby a Brooklyn Grand Jury makes what hesaid on the tapes a matter of public inter-est. The Stukes indictment confirms theexistence of a practice that Schoolcrafthad complained about: that officers werebeing asked to make arrests when they had not actually seen the misconduct.But the motive for Stukess alleged be-havior remains a mystery. Police sourcessurmised that either he saw the arrest asanother quota number, or he was simply cutting a key corner in the arrest process.

Internal Affairs opened an investigationinto how a series of sexual assault/robber-ies in an Upper Manhattan police precinctwere classified as misdemeanors, allowing a predator to remain on the loose, policesources say. The case was the subject of part 3 of the Voice series (NYPD Tapes3: A Detective Comes Forward, June 9).

The article disclosed that in late 2003, aman named Daryl Thomas got away with aseries of attacks on women because super-visors in the 33rd Precinct misclassifiedseveral of his attacks as trespassing insteadof sexual assault or burglary. Thomassthree-month crime spree ended by chancewhen an alert neighbor spotted him push-ing his final victim into her apartment.Police officers responded and arrestedhim. It was only after the arrest that adetective, Harold Hernandez, figured outthat Thomass previous attacks had beenmisclassified. The current investigation isbeing handled by a unit known as GroupOne of Internal Affairs, which is taskedto probe allegations against senior-levelNYPD commanders captains and above,the sources say. The former commander of the 33rd Precinct, Jason Wilcox, has beeninterviewed by investigators. A half-dozen

case files have been pulled and reviewed.Investigators have also spoken with oth-ers working in the precinct at the time.

In response to disclosures in the Voice andThe New York Times about police down-grading sexual assault cases, the NYPDcreated a panel that may eventually recom-mend more training for police officers.

Frank Palestro, a police union delegatein the 42nd Precinct in the Bronx, is

reportedly alleging that after he calledInternal Affairs to report a corrup-tion allegation, his precinct lieutenantfound out about it and ordered himtransferred. He says that his lieutenantordered cops to write fake summonses,refused to take criminal complaints,and tampered with a crime scene.

The Voice series sparked public outcry among residents, elected officials, andclergy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and it wasdiscussed in several public hearings inBrooklyn and Harlem. One speaker wasDavid Miller, who says that his 21-year-old son has been summonsed 50 timesover the years by 81st Precinct officers. Inone case, he was charged with trespass-ing for being in the parking lot of a localpharmacy. His father had sent him thereto pick up a prescription for diabetes.There was no complainant, Miller says.How do you give someone a

NYPD Tapes: Part 5 from p15

When his son, Christopher, was fired by the police department for refusing to makebullshit collars , Fred Bienz, a lawyer and retired firefighter, took up the cause, andfound information that sharply disputed the departments version of events. His effortsto get a new hearing for his son have been ignored.

>> p18

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ticket when theres no one complaining?On another occasion, he was ticketedfor standing in front of a grocery storeand talking to friends. In a third, he wasticketed for an open container becauseofficers saw a bag filled with empty beercans in the front yard. The cans wereawaiting a recycling pickup. In a debatein June, the Democratic candidates forattorney general said they were shockedby the disclosures in the Voice series, andmade pledges to investigate the validity of the NYPD crime statistics, if elected.The group Picture the Homeless held twopublic protests to highlight the NYPDsquestionable use of the disorderly con-duct charge to get people off the streets.Statistics obtained by the Voice show thatin more than 50 percent of these low-

level arrests, the charges are dismissed.

The series also contributed to the publicpressure in favor of limiting the stop-and-frisk database. Despite extensive lobby-ing by Kelly and Bloomberg, GovernorPaterson signed a bill into law that wouldprevent the NYPD and other police de-partments from keeping a database of names of people stopped but not arrested.

The new law, however, does not addressthe core issue of the alleged unconstitu-

tionality of the stops. As theVoice

seriesreported, cops were ordered to do stop-and-frisks to hit quotas an apparent violation of the legal standard that allows the practice.

Adil Polanco, now 29,began his career in Op-eration Impact in theBronxs 46th Precinct in2005. After eight months

there, he was transferred to the 41stPrecinct in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, a neighborhood he calls thepoorest square mile in the country.

Polanco says he did his job, but beganto object to the constant pressure fornumbers from his supervisors: I did notbecome a cop to be harassing people in thestreet, he says. You end up summonsing innocent people. They dont go to court,and the next time you stop them, they have a warrant and have to go to jail.

That pressure included stop-and-frisks,which are supposed to be done when anofficer has a reasonable suspicion that acrime has been or is about to be committed.

Wed make up a bullshit reason tojustify the stop, when, most of the time, wehad no reason to justify the stop, he says.We were told to say they fit the descrip-tion. But that just meant you were Span-ish or black. It was just for the quotas.

Polanco says precinct commandersneed positive statistics to improve theirchance of promotion: They want you tosummons people for disorderly conduct,when they arent doing anything, hesays. If the summonses are down for the

month, they rush to get them up, so theyllstick you in a checkpoint just for thepurpose of getting 10 summonses. Whathappens when you dont witness anything

illegal, but still have to hit your quota?He says it was a common practice in the

precinct for officers to be ordered to makearrests when they hadnt actually seen themisconduct: One time, I was ordered togive a guy a summons for no dog license, butthe problem was I didnt see a dog, he says.

The effect of this approach is that it strainsrelations with the community, he says: A

lot of the time, I would apologize, he says.They are frustrated. They dont trust thepolice. They feel were here to harass them.

Like Schoolcraft, Polanco also observedmanipulation of crime complaints. Hecited three incidents he personally wit-nessed during which criminal complaintswere either downgraded or not taken.

In one incident, he says, he respondedto a call of a burglary in a city-owned apart-ment. When he arrived, he noted that awindow had been broken, and the occu-

pant said cash and a video game had beenstolen. He called his sergeant and a lieu-tenant. When the lieutenant arrived, hewondered skeptically how a guy who lived

in public housing could own a 40-inch flat-screen television. He ordered Polanco andhis partner to leave the scene. Even thoughthe victim wanted a report taken, the lieu-tenant closed the case as unfounded.

In a second incident, an alleged burglary,the door had been pushed in. The victimclaimed that $600 in cash and some jewelry had been stolen. But a sergeant arrived at the

scene and ordered Polanco to take a reportfor something called unlawful eviction.

He said, Dont mention the money andjewelry in the report, Polanco says. Hetold me that the numbers were high thatweek. They look at the numbers weekly andcompare them to the same week the previousyear. What they want is to show a decline inthe numbers, but not too low, because it willbe harder the next year to show a decline.

In a third incident, Polanco respondedto a call of shots fired. A bullet had gone

through a vehicle window, but he wasordered to take the report as recklessendangerment. I was told to write that asharp object went through the

WE WERE TOLDTO SAY THEY

FIT THE DESCRIPTION.BUT THAT JUST MEANT

YOU WERE SPANISH OR BLACK.IT WAS JUST FOR THE QUOTAS.

>> p20


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glass, he says. They didnt have the perp,and it would look bad for the precinct tak-ing the report for attempted murder.

Polanco says precinct supervisors rou-tinely called crime victims back to try topersuade them to withdraw their reportor change their account in some way thatwould allow the incident to be reclassified asa lesser crime: Theyll say, You know werenot getting anything back on this, or Do youreally want to make the report?, he says.

If a robbery victim refused to returnimmediately to the precinct to speak todetectives, cops were told not to takethe report, Polanco says. If the victimcouldnt identify anyone from mugshots,they would tell them they would followup, but they wouldnt take a report, hesays. A lot of the time, they were Mexican

or Chinese delivery people who dontreally know how the system works.

The sergeants in the crime analysis unitwould call cops on the carpet to get themto explain why they took a given report,he says. He says there was a special binfor complaints involving the seven majorcrimes, and the following day, the com-plaints would be reviewed and edited.

There were also a couple of arrests thatbothered Polanco: In one case, a sergeantordered the arrest of a young man for hav-

ing a warrant for an open container, eventhough he had been slashed across theback a wound that required 40 stitchesto close. In another case, a man who had

been shot in the leg was arrested and takento the hospital in handcuffs because hehad a prior warrant on a minor charge.

Polanco started wearing a tape recorderin August 2009 to capture some of thepractices he had witnessed. It was the only way to prove what was going on, he says.

He caught some of the samethings that Schoolcraft recorded,

particularly the quota pressure.Twenty [summonses] and one [ar-rest, the monthly quota] make sureyou take care of what you gotta takecare of, a supervisor tells cops in oneof Polancos tapes. I dont give a shit,another supervisor tells him. You needto take care of your business, feel me?As a cop to a cop, make sure you takecare of what you gotta take care of.

Polanco also recorded something more controversial: two police union

delegates haranguing him to increasehis summons and arrest numbers.In one conversation, a Patrolmens Bene-

volent Association delegate tells Polanco:

Twenty and one is what the union wants.. . . This is what the job is coming down to.

Later, another delegate tells cops in aroll call, Things are not going to get any better. It is going to get a lot worse. If youthink getting one and 20 is breaking yourballs, guess what youre going to be do-ing? Youre going to be doing a lot more.A lot more than what you think. This

was all dealt with in the last contract.This delegate is later heard to say:This is not coming from me this is com-ing from higher up. The unions agreedon it. Were unionized here. This is whatwe pushed through. And lets be smartabout it. You gotta be smart about it.

Play the fucking game, a del-egate says on another tape.

The delegates were basically saying, Go along with the pro-gram, Polanco tells the Voice .

This is controversial because thePatrolmens Benevolent Associationhas long spoken out against quotas.But Polancos tapes capture the PBAs

own representatives essentially order-ing officers to make their numbers.

A PBA spokesman says one of thedelegates, Gaetano Fundaro, wasfound to be lying to his membersabout the quotas and was removed.

There is not now, nor has there everbeen, support for quotas by this union,PBA President Patrick Lynch tells theVoice . When confronted with informa-tion regarding a delegate who made falseclaims regarding support for quotas,the union took immediate action thatresulted in his removal as a delegate.

Lynch adds that the PBA has filedgrievances in the past on quotas, and actu-ally won such a case related to the 75thPrecinct. He said the PBA has proposed astatewide bill that would allow the unionto challenge any punitive action against apolice officer for failing to meet a quota.

The PBA is unified in its belief that quotasfor summonses and arrests are wrong andcounterproductive for both police officersand the communities they patrol, he says.

In another parallel to the Schoolcraftstory, Polanco was suspended on December13, 2009, after he contacted the InternalAffairs Bureau (IAB) to make allegationsabout downgrading, the constant demandfor artificial quotas, and what he saw as re-taliation by his lieutenant. My supervisorsknew I had gone to IAB, he says. They were asking me why did I go to IAB?

On the day he was suspended, hesays, Polanco and his partner were work-ing a checkpoint. His partner

NYPD Tapes: Part 5 from p18 ONE TIME,I WAS ORDERED TO GIVEA GUY A SUMMONSFOR NO DOG LICENSE,BUT THE PROBLEM WASI DIDNT SEE A DOG.

>> p23

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developed chest pains. Polanco wantedto accompany him to the hospital, but

his lieutenant wanted him to stay at thecheckpoint and write more summonses.When Polanco insisted on going to the

hospital after his partners condition wors-ened, the lieutenant grabbed him. Polancopushed him away. The lieutenant orderedhim suspended, and demanded his gun andshield. Polanco refused, because he didntfeel safe giving his gun to someone whohad pushed him. The lieutenant told Emer-gency Services he was to be treated as anemotionally disturbed person the sameterm that Schoolcraft was tarred with.

Polanco is married with two children,and his wife is pregnant with their thirdchild. He lives in Rockland County. Whilehe is suspended with pay, he must driveeach workday downtown to InternalAffairs on Hudson Street and sign a log-book, then turn around and drive home.

He is assigned to the military extended-leave desk, which seems like an attemptby the NYPD to hide him away. Instead, hehas been outspoken, giving a depositionto the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Meanwhile, a former rookiepolice officer, 26-year-oldChristopher Bienz, is tell-ing the Voice about thequota pressure he faced

when he joined the police department.Bienz, of Smithtown, Long Island,

says that when he graduated from thepolice academy, he was assigned to the115th Precinct in the Jackson Heightssection of Queens. He was sent to worka foot post on Roosevelt Avenue, andwas expected to make low-level arrestsand issue summonses to hit quotas.

When I got there, they gave me my post and a map and threw us out there, hesays. I remember walking out and not hav-

ing the slightest idea of where I was going.His supervisors told him he was ex-

pected to make two arrests and issue30 summonses a month. He was alsoexpected to do eight stop-and-frisks amonth: Youre constantly getting yelledat. They make you feel this big, he says.

Bienz, who comes from a family of copsand firefighters, says he came to believethat what he was ordered to do amountedto harassing regular working people. Idid not come on the job to lock up peoplefor riding their bikes on the sidewalk, hesays. Im not going to hassle a normal guy as long as hes not causing a problem, whenthere are other real crimes going on.

He started missing his quota, and his super-visors immediately started pressuring him.

At one point, after being called on thecarpet for not writing enough summonses,he told his sergeant, This isnt what I came

on the job to do. Im not going to makebullshit collars. The next day, he waschewed out by the precinct commander.

Bienz says he was also ordered not totake a criminal complaint from a victim.The man was drunk, and he was saying thathe had been robbed of his wallet, creditcards, and cell phone. A police supervisorarrived at the scene and told Bienz, Wecant take reports from drunk guys get ridof him. Tell him to call us in the morning.

Bienz says the precinct had a policy that if a victim did not want to return im-mediately to the stationhouse to speakwith detectives, no report would betaken. Both Schoolcraft and Polanco say their precincts had a similar policy.

Like Polanco and Schoolcraft, Bienzsays he was ordered to take arrests evenwhen he didnt actually see the misconduct.

After eight months in the 115th Precinct,Bienz was transferred to the 114th Precinct inthe Astoria section of Queens. There, he madea series of drunk driving arrests that earnedhim praise from his precinct commander.

One night, though, he was sent to AstoriaGeneral Hospital to guard a man who hadbeen arrested on a gun charge after shooting himself in the foot, and he ran afoul of a cap-tain who arrived to check on the prisoner.

The captain claimed that Bienzhad been sleeping on duty, and is-sued him an official reprimand.

Bienz went on working at the 114th.Nearly six months after the reprimand, aprecinct supervisor ordered him to sur-render his gun and shield based on the cap-

tains claims, which had somehow changedfrom sleeping on duty to insubordination.Just before Bienzs probationary period

expired, he was terminated. He had littlerecourse because rookie cops have nojob protection. The NYPD did not haveto give a specific reason for his firing. Hecould have been fired for any reason.

Bienzs father, Fred, a retired firefighterturned lawyer, tried to fight his sons fir-ing. Suing for unemployment benefits forhis son, he was able to find a nurse and thewounded prisoner, both of whom testifiedthat Bienz was neither sleeping on duty nor insubordinate toward the captain.He also produced telephone records thatshowed his son got a heads up from a fel-low officer before the captain arrived, andthus could not have been sleeping. >> p24

Christopher Bienz was fired as a pro-bationary officer assigned to Queens,in part, he says, because he resistedmaking low-level arrests and issuingsummonses to hit quotas. At one point,he says, he told a supervisor, This is notwhat I came on the job to do.


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In an interview with the Voice , Fred Bi-enz accused the captain of either perjuring himself or filing a false report. He also al-leges that someone altered official docu-ments in his sons case.

To this day, I honestly dont knowwhy my son got terminated, Fred Bienzsays. I have documentation to substanti-ate the altered evaluation, the false re-port, and the forged termination letters,but nobody from the commissionersoffice seems to care to address the is-sues. They refuse to speak to me aboutit despite the fact that Ive made every effort to communicate with them.

Christopher Bienz is now working as a mechanic in a bowling alley andliving at his parents home. He wouldstill like to work as a police officer,but his firing makes that unlikely.

Im living the dream,he says, sarcastically.

In addition to Polanco and Bienz,two more police officers have comeforward to make similar allegations,Schoolcrafts lawyer, Jon Norinsberg,says. Norinsberg requested that the Voice

withhold the names of the officers.One of those officers is from the 81stPrecinct, the same stationhouse whereSchoolcraft worked, the lawyer says. Healleges that the precinct commander atthe time, Steven Mauriello, was givena heads up that Internal Affairs wasinvestigating Schoolcrafts allegations.

If true, that claim would add ammuni-tion to Schoolcrafts allegation that the pre-cinct commanders retaliated against himafter they found out that he had gone to IAB.

Mauriello, this officer has toldNorinsberg, described School-craft as that rat upstate.

In addition, this officer alleges that asrecently as last April, precinct supervi-sors were issuing actual quota numbers,and threatening to fire officers who didnt

meet those quotas. This officer also al-leges that the practice of downgrading complaints was a common occurrence.

The second officer, who labors in a Bronxprecinct, claims that the downgrading of crime reports is a consistent practice that hecalled shitcanning, Norinsberg says. LikeSchoolcraft, this officer found reports thatwere questionable and followed up withvictims. He claims that his precinct com-mander would file legitimate crime reportsas unfounded so they wouldnt appear onthe all-important precinct crime statistics.

For Adrian Schoolcraft, life re-mains in a sort of limbo. He isliving with his father in a smallapartment in upstate New York,and has no income. He has been

suspended without pay, and is facing de-partmental charges for going AWOL and,ironically, impeding an investigation.

He has filed a $50 million lawsuitthat accuses the NYPD of violating hiscivil rights when he was dragged to theJamaica Hospital psychiatric ward forsix days after he blew the whistle.

In an odd touch, an NYPD official

recently approached a Voice reporter toforward a settlement offer to Schoolcraft.After the message was delivered, the policeofficial spoke directly to Schoolcraft and hislawyer. The offer was this: If Schoolcraftagreed to return to work and be served withdepartmental charges, he would probablykeep his job and would also become a wit-ness in the case against Mauriello, his for-mer precinct commander, and Deputy Chief Marino. Schoolcraft declined the offer.

The Schoolcraft tapes have becomeevidence in two other lawsuits againstthe city: one regarding the NYPDs stop-and-frisk practices filed by the Center forConstitutional Rights; the other, a class-action lawsuit involving two dozen plain-tiffs, which alleges that quotas are whatsdriving arrests and summonses. >> p26

Councilman Al Vann, other political figures, and clergy in Brooklyn are pressuringPolice Commissioner Ray Kelly to take action.


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8/8

Joshua Fitch, a lawyer in that case, saysthe tapes are the smoking gun: You takethe tapes and juxtapose them to the statistics,and then you take the stories from the indi-vidual plaintiffs, and you have a very clearpicture of whats going on, he says.

Incredibly, when Schoolcraft filed forunemployment benefits, the NYPD foughthim on it.

The NYPD is making life very dif-ficult for him, Norinsberg says. Theres

a level of spite here that is extraordinary,adding: His hospitalization was a shock-ing violation of somebodys civil rights.

Meanwhile, Schoolcraft gained a valu-able supporter in famed NYPD whistle-blower Frank Serpico, who called him andspoke with him for two hours. Serpicodeclined a Voice interview request, saying only, I just wanted to let him know, having been there, that I understand how he feels.

Curiously, despite the damning evi-dence contained in the tapes and in theVoice series not to mention the disturb-ing treatment of Schoolcraft the cityselected officials have been largely silent.

You would certainly hope to seemore aggressive action on the part of elected officials, Norinsberg says.

Mayor Bloomberg has said nothing,and his spokespeople, Stu Loeser and Ja-son Post, have not responded to any Voice

e-mails on the series. The series was metwith silence by Deputy Commissioner PaulBrowne, the NYPDs chief spokesman.

Other than Council members Al Vann,Darlene Mealy, and Letitia James, the City Council has largely been mute. CouncilSpeaker Christine Quinn has said nothing.

Councilman Peter Vallone, the chairof the public safety committee, stuck histoe in the water, but opted not to dunkit in all the way. He has the power tohold public hearings on police issues,but he has held none. None of his fellowCouncil members on the committee evenreturned repeated Voice phone calls.

Vallone, however, now tells the Voice that his probe of these issues continues, and

he is seriously considering holding a hear-ing on the subject: As I have continuedto investigate, the more concerned I havebecome, he says. Ive heard of everything from reclassification of complaints to ac-tual discouraging of victims. Ive spoken tovictims from throughout Queens and theentire city. If the mayor is going to use thecrime statistics to justify fewer officers,then the numbers better be accurate.

As for the oversight agencies, they, too,have been alarmingly mute. The CivilianComplaint Review Board (CCRB) has ut-tered not a peep, even after Chris Dunn,associate legal director of the New YorkCivil Liberties Union, called on the boardto investigate allegations in the series.

When the Voice asked the CCRBwhether it would investigate elementscontained in the tapes, CCRB spokesmanGraham Daw offered a tortured writ-ten statement essentially saying that theboards role is confined to investigating specific complaints: The jurisdictionof the CCRB extends only to particularencounters between police officers andmembers of the public, and, in most cases,

not to more general questions of polic-ing policies or practices, he wrote.

But thats not really true. The CCRB doeslaunch investigations on more general ques-tions, according to its website. The agency has, in the past 12 years, issued reports onstop-and-frisks, policing protest marches,strip searches, search warrants, pepperspray, and the use of hollow-point bullets.

Daw added that the CCRB

doesnt have jurisdiction to investi-gate whether a precinct commanderis giving appropriate orders.

The irony of this statement is that in1998, the CCRB actually did investigatewhy there was an unusual rash of civil-ian complaints in the 75th Precinct and81st Precinct the very same precinctthat was the subject of the Voice series.

Finally, the Mayors Commission toCombat Police Corruption has naturally been mute. That agency, created in thewake of the police corruption scandalsof the early 1990s, has become a tooth-less husk, gutted of any influence.

[email protected]

NYPD Tapes: Part 5 from p24 I JUST WANTEDTO LET HIM KNOW, HAVING

BEEN THERE, THATI UNDERSTAND HOW

HE FEELS.FRANK SERPICO ON HIS MESSAGE TO ADRIAN SCHOOLCRAFT

Steven Mauriello (circled), commanderof the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyves-ant, received an award from Police Com-missioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael

Bloomberg in 2009. A year later, he wasremoved from the post in the wake ofthe NYPD Tapes series in the Voice .He is currently under investigation.

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The NYPD Tapes Part 5

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