How many NYPD police planted drugs on innocent citizens?
A former New York narcotics detective has testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.
Stephen Anderson testified under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors after he was implicated in the corruption scandal that resulted in the arrests of eight police officers and a department shake-up, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
Anderson was arrested for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out a fellow officer, Henry Tavarez, whose "buy-and-bust" arrests had been low, the newspaper reported.
A corrupt ex-undercover cop says NYPD supervisors paid detectives extra overtime for hard-drug busts, creating a covert reward system for cocaine and heroin arrests.
Undercovers taking down smack or crack suspects routinely got two or three hours of overtime as payback, Anderson testified in a Brooklyn courtroom.
"So giving you overtime for a crack cocaine arrest is a reward for the nature of the crime ... would that be a fair statement?" asked Justice Gustin Reichbach.
"Yes, that's fair to say," Anderson testified last week at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.
Although Anderson didn't say so directly, the system provided rogue cops with a financial incentive to fabricate cocaine and heroin busts.
The OT had nothing to do with the amount of casework, he said.
Anderson said he first filed phony paperwork on March 15, 2005 - his "training day" as an undercover narcotics detective on the streets of Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Paired with another allegedly corrupt cop, Anderson filled out paperwork taking credit for a drug buy made by his partner.
He also provided multiple accounts of lying to grand juries, falsifying police reports and fabricating the circumstances of drug busts in Brooklyn and Queens.
"I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Anderson's testimony came in the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.
"Did you observe with some frequency this ... practice which is taking someone who was seemingly not guilty of a crime and laying the drugs on them?" Justice Gustin Reichbach asked Anderson.
"Yes, multiple times," Anderson replied. "As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division."
Cops made money by fabricating drug charges against innocent people, Stephen Anderson testified.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/10/14/2011-10-14_excop_ot_rewarded_in_drug_raps_added_incentive_to_fabricate_charges.html
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/10/13/Testimony-reveals-NYPD-false-arrests/UPI-18271318523938/