scandal

By Danny Gold

Mar 9, 2012 11:27 PM

NYPD Officer Sent To Psych Ward By Superiors After Reporting Corruption

Graham Rayman at the Village Voice brings us more on officer Adrian Schoolcraft, the modern day Serpico who was sent to a psych ward for reporting on corruption in the NYPD. While working out of the 81st precinct in Brooklyn, Schoolcraft became aware of a pattern of crime victims getting caught up in bureaucratic hurdles that seemed to have purposely been set up to make it hard to report serious crimes. Schoolcraft reported a number of these incidents to investigators. That's where things take a turn for the insane:

In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting-which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft's superiors-his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days.

Officer Schoolcraft is the same man that released two years of recorded roll calls at NYPD precincts, leading to the award winning series by Rayman that has revealed incompetence and corruption in the NYPD. The story of Officer Schoolcraft's forcible psych detainment was recently released in a 95 page report that vindicated Officer Schoolcraft, who has been suspended without pay for more than two years. He has since filed a lawsuit. The report was actually completed two years ago, and the NYPD has tried to keep it under wraps.
More from Rayman:

In the wake of our series, NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered an investigation into Schoolcraft's claims. By June 2010, that investigation produced a report that the department has tried to keep secret for nearly two years.
The Voice has obtained that 95-page report, and it shows that the NYPD confirmed Schoolcraft's allegations. In other words, at the same time that police officials were attacking Schoolcraft's credibility, refusing to pay him, and serving him with administrative charges, the NYPD was sitting on a document that thoroughly vindicated his claims.

Schoolcraft's complaints focused on the NYPD's alleged habit of juking crime stats to appear more effective. Anybody who has watched The Wire is familiar with the practice of turning felonies into misdemeanors or not reporting some crimes to make it appear is if the precinct had lower crime rates. Reports Rayman, "Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports." Both Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly have denied these allegations, but the newly released paper seems to confirm them.
Investigators concluded that "an atmosphere was created discouraging members of the command to accurately report index crimes.