The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (25 page)

Officers kept visiting the apartment complex and sitting in the driveway, writing their detailed reports essentially about nothing. A February 3 memo, for example, noted that snow on the hood of their car indicated it had not been driven for some time. “The undersigned remained vigilant, observed movement from the window at 1315. Sgt. Wilcon continued to video all movement from the unmarked vehicle of PO Schoolcraft’s apartment windows. After knocking on door, returned to car. Noticed male with red camera in hand.”

The Fulton County Social Services Department denied Schoolcraft’s application for public assistance benefits the following day, obviously scared off by the NYPD inquiries.

Brooklyn North Inspections arranged with TARU to set up more sophisticated video surveillance of the apartment.

At that point, surveillance had been going on for two months. The Schoolcrafts had not been idle. They finally found a reporter willing to listen to their story in Rocco Parascandola, the police bureau chief at the
New York Daily
News
. Parascandola was familiar with allegations of downgrading of crime, having helped write a groundbreaking series of articles in
Newsday
on the subject in 2004. Parascandola drove up to Johnstown, conducted interviews with Adrian, and left with Adrian’s documentation of individual examples of downgrading and failure to take reports. The reporter then did the difficult legwork, reaching out to the victims in the cases Adrian cited.

Schoolcraft gave Parascandola the same questionable crime reports he gave to QAD in October. The reporter was able to reach five victims who backed Schoolcraft. The rest either couldn’t be located or believed police handled their complaints correctly.

“It’s just not right,” Schoolcraft told the
News
. “They are taking advantage of people. A lot of crime victims don’t know any better.”

A front-page article was published on February 2 in the
Daily News
with the headline, “Crime What Crime: Cops Probe Whistleblower’s Charges Precinct Fudged Reports to Lower Stats.”

Mauriello called the allegations “atrocious.”

The story was finally out there.

In his on-the-record comments, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne confirmed the existence of a probe into his allegations. “We have received these complaints, and Quality Assurance has undertaken a review. These complaints are being reviewed as to whether or not this is true and whether this was done as a matter of error or intentionally,” Browne told the
News
.

Browne’s office confirmed that Schoolcraft was admitted to the Jamaica Hospital psych ward but declined further comment.

Parascandola quoted an unnamed source familiar with Schoolcraft’s psychiatric assessment that was completed following his release from the hospital. Parascandola wrote that this source told him, “The officer is perhaps too naive and idealistic but does not appear to be unbalanced. This is not
someone talking to himself on the street. There’s just a naiveté there. He doesn’t understand the police culture. Is he insane? Is he psychotic? Is he manic? Absolutely not. I think he can be believed.”

The article was long by
Daily News
standards and fairly reported what was known at the time as best as it could be determined. The Schoolcrafts were pleased with the top half, but it was the bottom half that irritated them.

They felt the piece spent too much space on Adrian’s restricted duty, low work review, and the psychiatric element. “Schoolcraft has big problems of his own,” the article read. “He received a poor work review early last year—his supervisors cited his need for constant supervision—and was stripped of his gun and put on desk duty after telling an NYPD doctor he thought work stress caused his stomach and chest pains.”

And the photo that the
News
ran of Schoolcraft wasn’t all that flattering. He was leaning forward into the camera, and his eyes were rimmed in red. The Schoolcrafts really didn’t like the photo.

Undeterred by the media interest, the very same day, the NYPD filed more charges against Schoolcraft for failure to comply with orders and “conduct prejudicial to the good order of the department.”

Reacting to the article, City Councilman Peter Vallone, the head of the council’s public safety committee, said a hearing should take place. Interestingly, Vallone would make several public comments like this over the next two years, but he never would actually call a hearing. At one point, he asserted that while police officers confided to him that crime stat manipulation was a larger problem than the NYPD had acknowledged, no officers would come forward to appear in a hearing, thus preventing that public airing in the chambers of City Hall.

For a little context, the New York city council is well known for holding hearings at the drop of a hat. In this instance, it seemed, a high bar was set, higher than just about any other issue. Were the crime numbers really such a sacred cow for the city that the council couldn’t muster the courage to challenge them? Was there someone at the top of the council blocking these hearings? As for Vallone’s contention that he couldn’t get other officers to testify, it could be true. However, there were plenty of other knowledgeable people who would testify. And at that point, Schoolcraft probably would have sat
before Vallone’s committee in open session. Could there have been a political component at work here? It begs the question.

On February 12, Parascandola followed up with a second article in the
News
that said investigators were looking into 1,400 crime reports at the 81st Precinct and “grilling” two dozen officers to determine how widespread the problem was. Mauriello told a community group, “I’m confident that the truth will come out. I know my character. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Still undeterred by the media coverage, the NYPD sent two lieutenants and two sergeants to Johnstown with more video gear. It still bears remembering that Schoolcraft had not been charged with a crime. “The original plan was to park, equipped with a Minipix dual receiver microwave video receiver/recorder in front of the subject residence.”

One team, in a “less familiar” sedan, would park closer to the apartment, and the other, a more familiar Jeep, would park farther down the street.

On this particular day, Larry Schoolcraft, frustrated with what he viewed as harassment, came out of the house with a video recorder of his own and questioned the officers. “My son wants nothing to do with the department,” Larry said.

Larry called the officers “Nazis,” to which they asked him not to use derogatory language.

Leonard Levitt, the longtime police reporter, quoted a senior Queens law enforcement official on February 15, saying he “can’t believe Jamaica Hospital would throw Schoolcraft into its psych ward simply on the word of police officers.”

The following day, Parascandola reported that another precinct, the 77th in Brooklyn, was also under investigation for crime report manipulation.

While Levitt and the
Daily News
had both jumped on the story, the
New
York Times
said not a word, and the
New York Post
ran a one-column story on an inside page on Saturday that no one really noticed.

The evidence that crime report manipulation was more widespread than the department admitted was bolstered by the release of a survey of hundreds of retired NYPD bosses by two professors of criminal justice—John Jay College’s Eli Silverman, who wrote an early book about CompStat, and John Eterno, a retired captain who taught at Molloy College.

In the study, the retired NYPD bosses told them that CompStat increased pressure to downgrade crime complaints. Half of the supervisors who responded to the survey told them they had seen a crime complaint altered and thought it was unethical. Based on their survey, Eterno and Silverman concluded that CompStat crime statistics “warranted careful scrutiny.”

“As crime goes down, the pressure to maintain it got great,” a retired boss told the professors. “It was a numbers game.”

Kelly’s spokesman, Paul Browne, dismissed the study as biased and unscientific. He claimed, wrongly it turns out, that it was paid for by the unions. And the pro-NYPD
Daily News
editorial board attacked the two professors, writing that they had “libeled the NYPD and every police officer who worked his or her butt off in the long, hard fight to make New York City safer.”

The
Daily News
downplayed the extent of statistical manipulation, as “a handful of superior officers caught in penny ante dodges.” “All those shenanigans combined are minuscule compared with the plunge in crime,” the
News
editorial concluded. “Do Eterno and Silverman believe that the NYPD is hiding hundreds if not thousands of killings? If so, where are the bodies?”

Meanwhile, on February 18, IAB opened another investigation into the fact that Schoolcraft was not residing within the city. This was a violation of the residency requirement, but one that many police officers, including police bosses, violate with impunity. Again, it seemed like the department was looking for every bit of leverage with which to squeeze Schoolcraft.

On February 22, Schoolcraft sat down with aides of Councilman Vallone and recorded it. Also present were retired lieutenant Anthony Miranda, who was the head of the Latino Officers Association and had remained active in police issues, and another retired cop. The purpose of the meeting was to basically convince Vallone to get involved. On the recording, one of his aides told Schoolcraft that the councilman took the allegations very seriously.

“They gotta continue to show higher numbers,” Miranda said. “That’s where the abusive nature of CompStat comes in. It was first just to make commanders aware. Now it’s about getting their numbers. All these things need to the abuse.”

Miranda added, “If you, as a cop, file complaints, there’s more of a tendency to refer you to psych services. If you aren’t hitting the quota, that becomes part of the it. And that ruins a person’s career.”

Schoolcraft chimed in: “Being referred to psych services is like being thrown down into a well and trying to climb out with a shoe string.”

Miranda suggested Vallone create a website where cops could provide information on downgrading. “Mmhm,” Vallone’s aide said. “Mmhm. We have to get ready for 5 o’clock. Thanks for coming by.”

The other aide asked about Adrian’s status.

“Screwed,” he said. “They’re probably going to fire me. But I’ll probably be able to be a big help to Mr. Vallone in my civil suit in acquiring court orders. So perhaps that can be of help. I would like to have some safe guarantee. Perhaps you can ask Mr. Vallone.”

“Yeah, we’ll be in touch,” the aide said, almost dismissively.

Despite what was said in the meeting, it went nowhere tangible. Vallone did nothing of consequence afterward, and, to the Schoolcrafts, it served as yet another example that the people and agencies who were supposed to monitor the NYPD were not willing to do their jobs. The Schoolcrafts didn’t hear from Vallone’s office again.

In late March 2010, largely because they thought the press coverage had been too narrow, the Schoolcrafts contacted Paul Moses, a former
New York Newsday
editor and reporter teaching journalism at Brooklyn College, who put them in touch with me at the
Village Voice
. Schoolcraft initially sent a cryptic email to me containing an excerpt from a tape of Sergeant Huffman telling officers not to take robbery complaints in the field but to refer them to the detective squad.