NYPD caught in scandal as cops caught planting drugs

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NYPD caught in scandal as cops caught planting drugs

Cops planting drugs on suspects to make an arrest sadly isn’t new, and this isn’t the first time it’s happened in the NYPD, but it’s something that should make the news every single time. At the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny, a former NYPD narcotics detective testified that it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people for the purpose of keeping quotas or getting promotions.

From Dangerous Minds:

In the astonishing testimony from Stephen Anderson, a former NYPD narcotics officer who’s testifying under an agreement with prosecutors, Anderson told of how he participated in false arrests and planted cocaine in order to meet arrest quotas and prevent a colleague from being put back on street patrol. The scandal hanging over the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads has led to the arrests of eight police officers. Via the New York Daily News:

“Tavarez was … was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

“I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy,” Anderson testified last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

He made clear he wasn’t about to pass off the two legit arrests he had made in the bar to Tavarez.

“As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division,” he said.

Anderson, who worked in both the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads, was asked by Justice Gustin Reichbach if such practices were widespread and if he’d observed them with frequency.

He replied:“Yes, multiple times.”

The judge pressed Anderson on whether he ever gave a thought to the damage he was inflicting on the innocent.

“It was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators,” he said.

“It’s almost like you have no emotion with it, that they attach the bodies to it, they’re going to be out of jail tomorrow anyway; nothing is going to happen to them anyway.”

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.