NYPD Ticket-Fixing Scandal, Bronx DA Seek Indictments For 17 Cops

Prosecutors probing a ticket-fixing scandal will ask a grand jury today to indict 17 cops including officials in the city’s largest police union. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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The Bronx district attorney’s office is seeking indictments for perjury, bribery, obstruction, grand larceny, rewarding official misconduct and other charges related to corruption.

Cops in prosecutors’ cross hairs include three top officials and at least five delegates in the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, as well as individual cops, sergeants, a lieutenant and a deputy inspector, sources said

“It’s going to be the biggest scandal this department has seen in a long time,” said a source close to the investigation. “The cops who will be named in these indictments are the ones who went the furthest.”

Most of the cops will be allowed to turn themselves in before appearing in Bronx Supreme Court, sources said. Others could be arrested at their precincts.

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson has briefed Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, sources said.

No arrests are expected until next week because Johnson “is in full damage-control mode” and wants the busts to be as orderly as possible, one source said. “They want all their ducks in a row before the cuffs go on anybody.”

Any indictments will be the culmination of a two-year investigation into the widespread practice of ticket-fixing in the NYPD.

Sources said cops facing possible indictments include:

A union delegate who pointed a service weapon at his wife during an argument and had pals in the department make records of the incident disappear.

Two cops who may have profited from drug-sale proceeds.

A PBA delegate who fixed several arrests for colleagues.

A delegate who fixed a speeding ticket for Doug Behar, the Yankees’ senior director of operations, in return for perks at the Stadium.

Several cops who “didn’t know where the line should be drawn” when it came to ticket-fixing and received money, pricey meals or gifts in return, a source said.

A PBA spokesman declined to comment.

The ticket-fixing probe began when internal affairs investigators tapped the phone of Officer Jose Ramos – then a union delegate in the 40th Precinct – after hearing he had ties to a major Queens drug dealer, sources said.

Ramos – who faces the most serious charges of all of the cops to be indicted – was heard on a wire asking a PBA delegate to fix a summons, sources said. “After that, this thing got bigger than anyone could have imagined,” one source said.

More than 25 cops, mostly PBA delegates, had their phones secretly tapped. Scores of recorded conversations and texts led to revelations of more ticket-fixing, arrest-fixing and bribery, sources said.

Hundreds of cops were implicated; most will face departmental punishment but no criminal charges. After investigators brought the evidence to prosecutors, about four dozen cops testified with immunity before the grand jury.

The testimony dragged on for six months as the fate of implicated cops hung in the balance – and pushed some to the edge.

Officer Robert McGee, 62, who testified before the grand jury this month, tried to kill himself last week by touching the third rail in the subway, sources said.

The scandal has also led to a huge decrease in summonses written by cops, as well as several acquittals in Bronx criminal trials where tainted cops had their credibility shredded.

“This case is going to have implications for the department and the Bronx DA for years to come,” one source said.

DN