Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire New York Cops Commit Felonies, But Keep Their Jobs

https://nypost.com/2022/11/25/these-nypd-officers-got-to-keep-their-jobs-despite-arrests/

METRO


Blue shield: These NYPD officers got to keep their jobs despite arrests
By Gabrielle Fonrouge
November 25, 2022 6:29am Updated
MORE ON:
NYPD

On a cold December morning just before dawn, NYPD Officer Candice Smith got into her Dodge Caliber and careened eight miles in the wrong direction down a Long Island freeway, narrowly avoiding what could have easily been a tragedy.

Smith — who’d been an NYPD patrol officer for three years at the time of the 2011 incident — was so intoxicated, her blood alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, police said after her arrest.

Five-and-a-half years later, Smith found herself back in handcuffs when she was busted for assault in the Bronx and then again in June 2020 in Queens, when she was arrested for drunk driving a second time, public records show.

Despite the three arrests, Smith, 37, is still a member of the NYPD and, most recently, spent her days watching surveillance cameras from Brooklyn public housing complexes — collecting her full salary, plus tens of thousands in extra compensation, records show.


“I’m an amazing police officer,” Smith, who made $99,516 last year, told The Post when asked for comment on her arrests outside her Queens home.

“Bad decisions are bad decisions but I’m an amazing police officer.”

Smith is one of at least 16 police officers who were arrested between 2017 and 2021 and allowed to keep their jobs — even after an NYPD administrative trial judge found them guilty of the acts they were accused of, a Post investigation has found.


Aside from felony convictions, offenses that violate an officer’s oath of office, or some domestic violence-related crimes — which all require automatic termination — disciplinary penalties are meted out and decided on exclusively by the NYPD’s police commissioner, regardless of what a department judge recommends or how severe or minor the case is.

All of them were accused of offenses that, if convicted, would have required automatic termination under state or federal law — including assault, menacing, stalking, strangulation, and aggravated harassment — but their cases all saw favorable outcomes in criminal court.

It’s not clear why the officers were allowed to keep their positions under the NYPD’s arcane disciplinary system, which has long been shrouded in secrecy, criticized for its lack of transparency, and accused of being nepotistic.

Breaking the law they’re supposed to uphold
The 16 officers are among 445 NYPD employees who were arrested between 2017-2021 for crimes as banal as driving without a license to as serious as rape, child sexual exploitation, and murder.

The group – employed by the NYPD in civilian and uniformed roles – make up a whopping 52% of the at least 873 city workers arrested over those years.

Nearly half of them, or 47%, were still employed by the department as of June. Some were even promoted after their arrests.

police unions, the gift that keeps on giving

Should have been fired plain and simple. What gives them the right to keep the outlaws? What does it take to get fired?

You would probably find the same at lapd, la County, Houston pd, Dallas pd, Atlanta pd, etc.

As long as the unfit, criminal officer goes with the flow at their department, they'll be spared.

However if someone dare speak out against the all mighty department, staff will go to the ends of the earth to see that officer fired.

You see, a vast majority staff officers (especially captain and above) only care about one thing, themselves. Those crooked cops are no threat to them, in fact they are quite useful, because now staff has something to hold over their head.....

Couple that with the current climate in this country, who da phugg would want to be a cop? Most large depts are hemorrhaging people, the ones leaving the profession. They can't fill the openings as is, why fire people? If you think le sucks now, just wait another 5-10yrs lol lol

A Facebook post critical of the biden administration?

with what goes on at the White House with the illegal 2020 election i guess it is just fitting to have cops with felonies too. WTF

I have a hard time believing any NYPD officer made less than $100K.

Wow! Talk about blatant corruption.

That's not counting graft.

I don’t know what graft is but read what they wrote in the article.

Boggles the mind how Law Enforcement Officers pay money to Organized Crime to represent them.

Some dont....

Illicit profit by corrupt means. In the case of cops, collecting regular payments from business establishments for looking the other way.

Used in a sentence: Michael Armstrong, who was counsel to the Knapp Commission and went on to become chairman of the city's Commission to Combat Police Corruption, observed in 2012 "The attitude throughout the department seems fundamentally hostile to the kind of systematized graft that had been a way of life almost 40 years ago."

Could just say "bribe"....

Yeah, but that wouldn't have expanded anyone's vocabulary.

20-30 years ago her DUIs wouldn't make the news. The cops would hustle the drunk cop away and nothing would be heard Out here, cops would nab a drunk driving fireman, take him to the closest fire station and drop him off there and let us handle it.

Lolol

So what? You can’t find anybody that wants to work anymore, so you don’t dare fire them or piss them off.

Are you Non-Union.

The unions are easy enough to get around if you’re smart. I wrote the job descriptions and requirements for my unit. They clearly state “must have and maintain a valid and unrestricted driver’s license”. This way I can fire them even if they plea out of the DUI.