The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (8 page)

As he testified years later in an unrelated trial, Marino believed, when he started out as 75th Precinct commander, his officers weren’t working hard enough. “They were doing five [summonses] a month, which was just not enough to address the problem,” he testified. “It was almost malfeasance. . . . The level of activity they were performing was so low that it was a detriment to the community, in one of the most crime ridden precincts in the city.”

So he spent weeks touring the precinct, making arrests, writing tickets, investigating. He concluded his cops could do a lot more. He set a standard of 10 tickets per month and one arrest per cop. “I set a standard that said do your job or suffer the consequences,” Marino testified.

Now, Marino was not only Schoolcraft’s former precinct commander, but also his future antagonist. The Velez dispute came to a head in January 2006, when a special arbitrator named Bonnie Weinstock ruled that, indeed, there was a traffic ticket quota in violation of state labor law.

“The memos could not have been clearer . . . I am completely persuaded that this is a quota,” she wrote. The NYPD had violated state labor law. “The city,” she added, “shall cease and desist from maintaining a vehicular ticket quota.”

But in practice, nothing really changed. Marino continued to be promoted. And Schoolcraft was already aware of quotas. They were a constant in the NYPD, even if the bosses at 1 Police Plaza wouldn’t publicly admit it. In fact, the pressure to produce arrests, summonses, and stop and frisks was hammered home in nearly every roll call.

In October 2006, a new executive officer arrived in the 81st Precinct. His name was Steven Mauriello. When Mauriello was promoted to precinct commander a year later, it would spell the beginning of the end of Schoolcraft’s police career.

In June 2007, Adrian had a conflict with a Lieutenant Jones over whether he was properly authorized to leave work to help his wheelchair-ridden father get home from the hospital.

Schoolcraft was so irritated by the exchange that he wrote another notarized letter to the precinct’s commanding officer. In the letter, Schoolcraft alleged that Jones threatened to punish the whole shift of officers for what Schoolcraft did.

“Every violation that I usually put in the minor violations I’m writing CD’s for, so you can thank somebody for that,” Jones said, according to the letter. “Schoolcraft, see me when you’re finished.”

“This is a formal complaint regarding the conduct of Lt. Jones,” Schoolcraft wrote. “His retaliatory threats were intended to create a hostile work environment for myself and other officers.”

By December 2007, perhaps because he had begun questioning things, Schoolcraft’s rating dropped to a 3, which was still at standards, but teetering on the edge of unsatisfactory. The precinct’s crime rate dropped 1 percent.

For the year, he had made 620 radio runs, done 71 vertical patrols, written 34 tickets, written 6 C summonses, and made 9 arrests. Those numbers were lower than his 2006 totals.

In the evaluation Sergeant William Meyer wrote: “He at times needs direction or prompting to resolve problems. He at times needs extra guidance to meet goals and deadlines. He does need extra motivation to perform his assignments and meet performance goals.” This is the first time his evaluation sank to pedestrian margins.

CHAPTER 4

“PLAY THE GAME”

B
y the end of 2007 going into 2008, the precinct’s executive officer, Steven Mauriello, was given command of the precinct and promoted to deputy inspector. Mauriello was born on Long Island, and he graduated from Valley Stream High School in 1985. As a high school kid, he worked as a stock boy, making $5 an hour at the local Foodtown supermarket. He attended college at St. John’s University and graduated in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology. His college transcript indicates that his grades were mostly Bs and Cs, but he did get an A in composition and rhetoric and a D+ in a criminal investigation class.

He joined the NYPD in 1989. In one of his very first evaluations, in February 1990, his supervisor wrote, “Officer Mauriello has excellent career potential. He is a reliable and dedicated police officer. He has good arrest and summons activity. He should have a good career with the department.”

In other words, Mauriello learned the lesson fairly quickly: Good “activity” gets you places in the NYPD.

In December 1991, while Mauriello was assigned to the 34th Precinct in Manhattan, two men posing as Con Edison workers pushed their way into a Manhattan apartment occupied by a couple and their nine-year-old daughter. He and other officers blocked their escape and arrested them and then cared for the victims.

“The officers were aware of our horrible experience and treated us with care and understanding,” the father wrote.

In 1993, a precinct resident wrote to Mauriello’s boss, Joseph Esposito, who would become a top chief ten years later, “We feel he [Mauriello] deserves recognition for his deep concern in our dire need for help in this drug infested area. . . . We need more officers like Steven Mauriello.”

Another 1993 letter thanked him for “his earnest attempt to make our life more bearable here.”

By 1994, Mauriello had been promoted to sergeant and sent to work in the Brooklyn North warrants unit. He continued to garner good evaluations. “He can be counted on to get the job done,” one read. Six years later, he was promoted to lieutenant, working in the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg and elsewhere.

As a lieutenant in 2001, assigned to the 88th Precinct, his captain rated him as high as he could on the form and wrote that he had great integrity, was a tireless worker, was an outstanding supervisor, and had excellent career potential.

Mauriello’s Internal Affairs file remained clean, listing just four allegations, all of them unproven.

In October 2003, he was promoted to captain, working in anti-crime, where he was lauded for increasing arrest activity, and he started being recommended for a precinct command. When he arrived at the 81st Precinct, he initially worked as the executive officer before being promoted to commander.

The only official black mark in his file was a 2008 letter of reprimand. Evidently, Mauriello lost his temper with the Civilian Complaint Review Board and called investigators to question what they were doing and to attack the credibility of people who had filed complaints against his cops. “This conduct is inappropriate,” wrote Chief of Internal Affairs Charles Campisi.

As commander, Mauriello adopted the hands-on, numbers- and productivity-focused approach that was favored by ambitious commanders in the era of CompStat. He was given to long grandiose speeches about the importance of getting numbers and being aggressive on the street.

As for Schoolcraft, in general, Mauriello said later that he viewed him as “unproductive” and felt that he didn’t take instruction well. However, he did not believe Schoolcraft was a discipline problem.

Meanwhile, Schoolcraft didn’t think much of Mauriello’s obsession with numbers. Yet he soldiered on. The monthly performance reports that he
was required to file, listing the number of radio runs he had, the number of arrests, and 21 other statistical categories, offer a roadmap to the shift life of a typical police officer.

For example, in January 2008, he responded to 23 radio runs, did 4 vertical patrols, took 5 complaints, responded to 2 accidents, and made out 5 domestic incident reports. He did not make an arrest. He wrote that month that he “performed directed patrol at high crime location, conducted vertical, responded to multiple radio runs, multiple domestic incidents.”

That month, he also did ten shifts just working security at MetroTech, an office/housing complex in Brooklyn where the 911 dispatch system is located. That meant that he was away from his patrol duties a third of the month. This is a common but little-known problem in the NYPD. Police officers are constantly being removed from their regular duties to stand security or attend some detail. That practice often guts the number of patrol cops on a given shift. But precinct commanders are still expected to make their “numbers,” even with a constant deficit in the number of officers they can field.

In February 2008, he spent four shifts at MetroTech, two shifts babysitting prisoners, and three on something called CRV—an anti-terrorism program developed by Kelly, in which lines of police cars with lights flashing drove around the city as a supposed deterrent that was more about public relations than terrorism and was another a constant drain on patrol manpower.

In March 2008, his supervisor wrote that Schoolcraft was “always courteous and respectful, and is actively involved in enforcing precinct conditions.”

Then, between March and April, something changed. That was the last favorable comment Schoolcraft received on a written evaluation. From there on out, his sergeant, Raymond Stukes, and other 81st Precinct bosses started building a drumbeat of pressure on Schoolcraft, demanding more “activity” or higher numbers of arrests, summonses, radio runs, and stop and frisks. Schoolcraft did not feel that his productivity had particularly declined, so he was puzzled at the sudden change in temperature.

An increasing level of frustration with Schoolcraft was palpable in the monthly activity reports filed by his supervisors. In April 2008, one month after the fairly positive March review, Stukes wrote, Schoolcraft “needs
improvement in areas of activity.” In May, they wrote, “MOS has consistently produced substandard activity. He has been counseled repeatedly.”

In June, Mauriello himself counseled Schoolcraft on his “productivity expectations.”

It was around this period that Schoolcraft complained to his father about the constant harangue for numbers and the pressure his supervisors were placing on him. They went back and forth about what to do. Schoolcraft finally decided to start wearing a digital recorder. The taping of the precinct began. He wore the recorder throughout his eight-hour tour, picking up the roll calls, the precinct banter, and whatever happened out in the street. When he got home, he downloaded the day’s content onto his computer, reviewed it for what might be useful, and made careful notes.

“He knew they were going to come after him because he wasn’t producing,” Larry said. “Brower [Mauriello’s predecessor] looked the other way on him, he accepted the other qualities that Adrian had. The whole tenor of the precinct changed when Mauriello came in. He knew Mauriello was going to make him do things that he didn’t want to do. I told Adrian, ‘play the game.’ Go out and get a couple more quality numbers a day. Let them think you are playing the game. He couldn’t do that.”

Meanwhile, Mauriello and his sergeants and lieutenants were hammering home to the patrol officers that they needed to bring back numbers. He was particularly focused on congregations of young African American men on the corners. He would often roam the precinct, and when he spotted these groups, he would call in his officers to arrest them. These came to be known as “Mauriello Specials.” The arrestees would be held a few hours in the precinct and then released. At one of the roundups outside a particularly notorious housing project, Mauriello whistled “Danny Boy” as seven people were cuffed and hauled away.

On June 12, 2008, Schoolcraft’s recorder captured a sergeant ordering cops to arrest with the intent of releasing the “suspects” a few hours later. “Guys on the corner? You gotta leave. Bounce. Get lost,” he said. “You’ll void it later on in the night so you’ll all go home on time.”

Shortly after that remark, a lieutenant discussed “productivity” and actually—and this is rare, because quotas are illegal—identified the expected numbers that cops were supposed to generate. “The XO (second-in-command)
was in the other day, he actually laid down a number. He wants at least 3 seat belts, 1 cell phone and 11 others. Alright, so if I was on patrol, I would be sure to get 3 seat belts, 1 cell phone and 11 others. Pick it up a lot, if you have to. The CO [commanding officer] gave me some names. I spoke to you.”

On July 1, 2008, a sergeant told his cops: “Be an asshole. They gonna do something, shine a light in their face. Inconvenience them. It saves trouble later on. Some of you with good activity are going to be moving up.”

The following day, a precinct supervisor ordered cops to make an arrest, when in the past, a dispute might have been talked out. “The days of mediating between a perp and a store owner are over,” a sergeant said on July 2. “If the guy is in the back with five sticks of deodorant, you gotta collar him,” the sergeant said. “There’s no more mediating.”

The bosses also demanded stop and frisks, known as 250s for their official designation on NYPD forms. The pressure was so great, Schoolcraft repeatedly saw officers filling out fake stop and frisk forms for imaginary people. These were known as “ghost 250s.” Because citizens were allowed to refuse to give their name, patrol officers could get away with omitting the identity of the person they stopped. The problem got so bad that summer that a lieutenant had to dress down officers for filing too many 250s without names. “We had ninety-six 250s, all refused,” he says. “We can get some people refusing, but it can’t be every 250 that you do.”

Also that summer, Mauriello was on a campaign to clear the corners through quality-of-life arrests. He became a fixture in the afternoon roll calls. On July 15, he said, “They wise off, they fucking push you, I expect them handcuffed, all right?” He later added, “Anybody gets stopped and it’s a summons-able offense, I want them handcuffed and brought into the precinct . . . zero tolerance.”

He made a veiled threat to punish officers who didn’t get their numbers. “I don’t want to see anyone get hurt. This job is all about hurting. Someone has to go. Step on a landmine, someone has to get hurt.”

He told them that he wanted block parties shut down after 8:30 p.m. “After 8:30, it’s all on me and my officers, and we’re undermanned,” he said. “The good people go inside. The others stay outside.”

“I’m getting rocked today,” Mauriello said on another day. “Since the midnight [shift], I’ve got five fucking robberies already and burglary assaults.
So the game plan tonight is Operation Zero Tolerance. If they fuckin’ break the law on the corner, I’m scooping them all up, putting them in the cells.”