The charges against 16 police officers who will be arraigned on Friday afternoon as a result of a long-running grand jury investigation into the fixing of tickets for colleagues, family members and friends portray it as a highly organized systematic practice citywide, according to one person with knowledge of the case.
The charges, detailed in a stack of paper made up of nearly two dozen indictments containing over 1,600 criminal counts, include hundreds of instances in which 10 of the officers allegedly fixed traffic tickets, several people with knowledge of the case said. Six other officers were accused of engaging in a wide variety of corruption crimes, the people said. The charges were to be unsealed Friday morning in Supreme Court in the Bronx.
Many of the counts are misdemeanors, though all the officers, except for two, are charged with felonies, one of the people said.
Ten of the officers are officials in the union that represents police officers, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, and those officers essentially served as liaisons for fixing tickets, several people briefed on the case said. Also among those facing charges were two sergeants and a lieutenant.
The charges represent a blow to the union, and the case has already changed its culture of freewheeling favor trading, which many said grew from a kind of professional courtesy — one officer helping another — to fixing tickets for family, friends and more distant acquaintances.
And the indictments come at a difficult time for the Police Department, which earlier this week saw eight of its current and former officers charged with transporting what they believed were illegal guns into New York City and other crimes. Recently, other officers have been charged in federal court with making false arrests, and a trial in Brooklyn has featured testimony about narcotics detectives planting drugs on innocent civilians.
Among those who surrendered, several people said, were three of the union’s midlevel managers, Officers Joseph Anthony, 46; Michael Hernandez, 35; and Brian McGuckin, 44. They are the union’s three highest-ranking officials in the Bronx.
Officer Anthony has been charged with about 100 counts and Officer Hernandez with more than 125, one person said. Both men were charged with tampering with public records, a felony, along with numerous counts of conspiracy, official misconduct and obstructing governmental administration.
Officer McGuckin was charged with close to 200 counts, including forgery, a felony, the person said, as well as official misconduct, obstructing governmental administration and conspiracy.
Officer Eugene P. O’Reilly, 39, a union delegate in the 45th Precinct in the Bronx was named in the most counts, over 250, and was also charged with forgery, the person said.
On Thursday, hundreds of police officers wearing suits or street clothes packed a basement corridor that led to a courtroom where the defendants were scheduled to appear. Officers said they were there to support the defendants. Several were wearing dark blue t-shirts with yellow lettering that spelled out Bronx PBA on the front next to an image of a badge and on the back bore the message, “Improving everyone’s quality of life but our own.”
A spokesman for the union, Al O’Leary gave reporters a statement from the union president, Patrick Lynch: “Right now, this has been landed on the shoulders of police officers. When the dust settles and we have our day in court, it will be clear that this is part of the NYPD at all levels.”The ticket-fixing investigation has been plagued by leaks to union officials from within the Internal Affairs Bureau, several people briefed on the inquiry have said, and the leaks prompted a separate inquiry. The lieutenant charged in the case, Jenarra Cobb, who worked on the initial stages of the inquiry when she was in Internal Affairs, has been indicted on several misdemeanor counts, disclosing wiretap information, official misconduct and obstructing governmental administration, several people said.
She was accused of meeting with a lieutenant and an officer at a restaurant and telling them about the wiretaps in the ticket-fixing investigation, one of the people said. The next day delegates from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association were told by union trustees to stop talking on their phones, the person said.
Her lawyer, Philip E. Karasyk, called her “the quintessential police professional,” adding: “She is knowledgeable, caring and well respected by her fellow officers. She will be vindicated.”
The broader investigation, which was the subject of scores of news articles, has proved to be an embarrassment to the Police Department and to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. He has defended the agency, saying the officers involved in the ticket investigation and other recent corruption scandals represent a tiny fraction of the 35,000-member force.
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But the investigations have clearly taken their toll on police morale, and the ticket case has hit the city hard financially amid a recession, with officers writing significantly fewer traffic and parking summonses, cutting what has traditionally been a reliable and substantial income stream for the city.
The ticket charges involve more than 300 traffic summonses that were fixed, one of the people with knowledge of the inquiry said, noting that about 800 instances of ticket-fixing arose during the three-year investigation.
The allegations unrelated to ticket-fixing include narcotics corruption, covering up an assault and the lieutenant accused of leaking wiretap information, the people have said.
Five civilians were arrested Thursday night, including two accused of drug dealing, a tow-truck operator and a paint-store owner, one person said.
The investigation began in December 2008 with an anonymous complaint that Jose R. Ramos, an officer in the 40th Precinct, was providing protection for a drug dealer, several people have said. After investigators gathered enough information to obtain a wiretap on the officer, who was once a union delegate, they began hearing conversations about fixing tickets, the people said.
Officer Ramos and his wife, one of five civilians to be charged, were arrested at their Washington Heights home Thursday night. His lawyer, John R. Sandleitner, said his efforts to surrender his client were rebuffed and that Officer Ramos denied the protection accusation.
“We’ll fight the case, and when everything comes out in the light of day before a jury, we’ll see who’s believable,” Mr. Sandleitner said.
The grand jury heard from about 80 witnesses over six months, the people said, and voted over a period of several weeks, with the ticket-fixing charges including grand larceny, tampering with public records, conspiracy and official misconduct.
About midnight Thursday, some of the accused officers began arriving at Central Booking at Bronx Criminal Court, at 215 East 161st Street. About 60 off-duty officers crowded in the main foyer to support their comrades. They formed a human wall, four-deep, between reporters and the some of the accused officers as they came out of a hallway. At three different times, when three of the accused men showed their faces, the crowd burst into applause. The accused men waved and pumped their fists in the air. An official came out of the hallway and stared down the crowd, drawing insults. A woman told the assembled officers to meet in the morning to support the accused officers at their arraignments.
A spokesman for the 23,000-member union said that Patrick J. Lynch, its president, declined to comment earlier Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday afternoon, the union sent a text message to 400 of its delegates encouraging them to fill the courtroom in the Bronx with officers in a show of support for the implicated union members. The idea was for those delegates to spread the message to rank-and-file members, the person said.
Mr. Lynch was expected to be in court on Friday, the person said.
One former and six current union delegates from the Bronx who are facing ticket-fixing charges were also expected to surrender, the people said. In addition to Officer O’Reily, they are Officer Virgilio Bencosme, 33, of the 40th Precinct; Officer Christopher Scott, 41, of the 48th Precinct; Officer Jaime Payan, 37, of the 46th Precinct; Officer Christopher Manzi, 41, of the 41st Precinct; Officer Luis R. Rodriguez, 43, of the 40th Precinct; and Jason Cenizal, 39, a former delegate from the 42nd Precinct.
Also facing charges were two sergeants — Officer Ramos’s supervisor, Jacob G. Solorzano, 41, and Marc Manara, 39 — and two other officers, Jeffrey L. Regan, 37, and Ruben Peralta, 45.
