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.
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.
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