Hundreds More Cases Linked To Dirty NYPD Cops Dismissed By Prosecutors

Legal Issues

from the making-cases-just-to-break-them dept

No matter how expensive law enforcement is, it can always get more expensive. Most agencies demand outsized portions of local budgets. That’s just the ground floor.

Cops want more money and less accountability. Perpetually. The cost of keeping bad cops on the payroll is far, far more than their paychecks. Bad cops generate lawsuits, which generate legal fees and settlements, all paid for by the people already paying their salaries.

That’s what the NYPD does. In addition to its ~$10 billion (with a “B”) annual budget, the city (via the billfolds of residents) hands out more than $250 million a year in lawsuit settlements.

Then there’s the double-charging NYC residents have seen over the past couple of years. They pay cops to make busts, only to have those cops repay their trust with corruption and severe misconduct. Now, prosecutions that residents have paid for are being tossed, thanks to their link to disgraced or convicted NYPD officers.

The additional bleeding started early last year, when a single corrupt NYPD narcotics detective (Joseph Franco, a 20-year-officer hit with 26 criminal charges in 2019) resulted in the dismissal of 90 cases. One officer, nearly 100 cases. The flow of blood continued throughout 2021, leading to another 60 dismissals in November, these related three officers facing criminal charges. One of those officers had been with the NYPD for thirteen years before finally being fired.

The bleeding has only accelerated since then. In August of this year, another 133 convictions linked to former detective Joseph Franco were dismissed by the Bronx district attorney, bringing this one officer’s total to more than 500 tossed cases.

This is the latest news on the corrupt cop/case dismissal front for the NYPD. It very likely won’t be the last.

District Attorney Eric Gonzalez presented 378 cases to a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge asking for their dismissal based on new evidence that the police officers who testified were not reliable witnesses.

“These former police officers were found to have committed serious misconduct that directly relates to their official job duties, calling into question the integrity of every arrest they have made,” Gonzalez said. “A thorough review by my Conviction Review Unit identified those cases in which their testimony was essential to proving guilt, and I will now move to dismiss those convictions as I no longer have confidence in the integrity of the evidence that underpinned them.”

These cases are linked to 13 officers, some who have been found guilty of criminal acts including planting drugs, taking bribes, perjury, and… um… murder[!!!]. 131 of the cases are linked to a corrupt Brooklyn narcotics unit. The other 78 cases are linked to two drug officers who admitted to accepting sexual favors as bribes.

I guess this is how the city plans to save a little money during its ongoing mass rollback of convictions linked to bad cops.

The defendants will not receive refunds of any fees or fines they received in connection with the charges.

That just seems kind of petty, especially when city officials claim these dismissals are aimed at “enhancing community trust” in the criminal justice system, if not the NYPD itself.

On the other hand, the voluntary dismissals due to the misconduct of the officers involved in them paves a pretty clear path for plaintiffs to file civil rights lawsuits over bogus arrests and prosecutions. The city may be avoiding paying much out on the front end, but it looks like there will be plenty of backend liability in the future. Unfortunately, this just increases the financial burden for residents, who have been required to pay a premium for subpar NYPD police service. And now they’re going to be asked to pay for prosecutions they already paid for once, all thanks to “too little, too late” accountability.

Filed Under: corruption, evidence, joseph franco, nypd