The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (32 page)

Over the final quarter of 2010, Kelly and his top staff finally made several concrete moves aimed at blunting the controversy. First, on October 7, according to internal police reports, Charles Campisi, chief of Internal Affairs, forwarded the “interim report” on the Schoolcraft investigation to Kelly. Campisi was a long-serving IAB chief, and his opinions carried a lot of weight in the NYPD. The document was interesting almost less for what it contained than for what it omitted or left murky.

Campisi wrote in a cover letter, also dated October 7, that the investigation into Schoolcraft’s allegations had been hampered by “his lack of
cooperation on the advice of his attorney. . . . All efforts to enlist his continued participation have not been successful and the investigation will continue regardless of his participation.”

Charitably, this claim was suspect. IAB didn’t talk to Schoolcraft after November 2009, even though the Schoolcrafts were more than willing. “We never got another call from them,” Larry said. “If they had called, we would have talked to them.”

As for Marino, Campisi wrote that the chief had characterized the response to Schoolcraft being AWOL as “not a big issue.” Campisi disagreed, writing, “This was more than a routine AWOL investigation,” as indicated by Marino’s involvement.

Campisi rejected Schoolcraft’s claim that his tape recorder was stolen. “He was able to provide a recording. It should be noted that Schoolcraft has recently stated there were two recording devices in his residence and one is missing.”

The investigation concluded that Mauriello was aware of the QAD investigation and of Schoolcraft’s potential participation. “He denied both at his PG 206–13 hearing,” Campisi wrote. Mauriello would receive charges for impeding an investigation and for failure to ensure that a complaint report was accurately prepared.

Campisi concluded that charges were still being considered for Marino for failing to notify IAB about “an allegation of corruption or serious misconduct against himself, as well as other MOS who were present in on the date in question and for impeding an investigation.”

The 37-page interim report that followed Campisi’s letter to Kelly was a curious one because it appeared comprehensive, but a close reading revealed much that was either distorted, omitted, or contradictory.

For one thing, it was biased against Schoolcraft and granted much more space to Marino, Mauriello, and Lauterborn.

Schoolcraft’s claim that aide Monique Carter told him that Weiss and Caughey removed records of civilian complaints from Weiss’s personnel folder was rejected, along with just about every other of his allegations.

The report concluded that there was no link between Schoolcraft reporting misconduct and the events of Halloween night. However, the
report also said both Lauterborn and Mauriello knew that Schoolcraft had gone to QAD. Mauriello denied knowing anything about it, but Lauterborn told investigators he had briefed the precinct commander about it.

The report claimed, “PO Schoolcraft refused to go to the hospital and clenched his fist while backing up into the corner of his bed,” while the recording of Halloween night didn’t indicate that.

A total of 32 officers were interviewed, and none of them felt pressured by anyone regarding summonses and arrest quotas. They all, fairly incredibly, denied the existence of a quota system in the precinct. None of them alleged they had been punished—denied vacation, overtime, or a bad transfer—for failing to hit any quota. None of them said they heard a specific quota number in any of the roll calls.

All fell in line, except for one officer, Sylvia Nowacki, who disclosed that officers were “expected to generate 15 summonses every month and one arrest every quarter.”

Mauriello denied ever retaliating against Schoolcraft. He also denied any knowledge that Schoolcraft had informed on the precinct. He claimed he never knew that Caughey had copied pages from the memo book or that he had seen those copies. He also denied knowing why Schoolcraft was placed on restricted duty. He denied any quotas and denied officers were punished for low activity.

The report used Schoolcraft’s recording against him, making a priority of the fact that Adrian used the word “nigger” during the October 6 conversation with Larry and charging that the Schoolcrafts cooked up the whole thing.

“A review of the tapes provided by Schoolcraft demonstrates that he was being coached on what to say to QAD by his father, and the two individuals appear to have orchestrated the AWOL event,” the report said. “The subject officer was observed to be on his cell phone during this entire incident and appeared to be coached as to his irrational behavior and refusals to comply.”

Even though he had credibly reported downgrading of crimes, IAB said the charges against Schoolcraft were “a just result of his own misconduct by leaving the 81st Precinct before the end of his tour without permission.”

In closing, the report blamed Schoolcraft for the unfinished nature of the investigation. “Without his cooperation, questions remain unanswered regarding his motivation for the AWOL incident and subsequent events.”

This claim that the Schoolcrafts cooked up the whole thing is the most damning allegation in the report. It was known that Larry Schoolcraft had also sued his department—a fact that was leaked to me in August 2010 with the obvious intent to undermine the Schoolcrafts.

Later, the Schoolcrafts disputed the allegation that they had conspired to come up with an incident that would allow Adrian to sue the department. “We didn’t start talking about suing the department until after Halloween night,” Larry said. “There was no conspiracy even though some of what’s on the recordings might sound like it. We were talking about an Article 78 over his evaluation, not some big lawsuit against the city.”

The use of the word “nigger” is taken completely out of context, the Schoolcrafts said.

The report claimed that Adrian was free to leave the hospital at any time and said he did not attempt to leave. However, Adrian did at one point try to leave. Larry was present for that. But he was blocked. Moreover, hospital medical records showed that he was held as an “escape risk,” suggesting he in fact was not free to leave.

Captain Lauterborn’s statement made reference to something that no one in Schoolcraft’s camp believed: During the summer of 2009, he told investigators, Schoolcraft was aware of an ongoing QAD investigation into downgrading of crime statistics.

He claimed that several officers had complained that Schoolcraft had asked them about what they had said. Lauterborn said he told Schoolcraft not to ask officers about the investigation. Lauterborn claimed he told the officers to call IAB if Schoolcraft continued to speak with them.

Lauterborn told investigators he “began to believe” Schoolcraft was involved with the QAD investigation. He said he spoke to Mauriello about it. Eventually, the whole precinct knew about the QAD investigation, and “it was commonly believed that Schoolcraft was involved.”

This statement is puzzling because it’s clear from the recording of the October 7 QAD meeting that that day was the first time Schoolcraft had spoken to anyone from the crime audit unit.

Finally, nowhere in the report did it mention the many other questions about the conduct of police officials other than Marino and Mauriello.

Since it was known that Nelson had been consulted, it strained credulity that they acted without the approval of their commanders, or that Nelson did not reach above him for the green light to handle Schoolcraft as they did. It was as if headquarters had drawn a circle around a set of names, and none other shall cross that line.

The next day, October 8, IAB signed off on charges against Mauriello for “conduct prejudicial to the good order of the department,” in that when he was interviewed in August 2010, he told investigators that he wasn’t aware of the QAD investigation until long after Halloween night. “In fact, the investigation disclosed that he was aware prior to those dates,” the charges read.

The second count alleged that Mauriello denied that he knew about the entries in Schoolcraft’s memo book, when in fact he did, according to the charge. Third, he was accused of failing to take a crime complaint report for the theft of Darryl Sweeney’s car on June 30, 2009 (this was when he made the karma comment).

Fourth, he was charged with “providing inaccurate and misleading facts surrounding the circumstances” of the Sweeney incident to investigators. Fifth, he was charged with falsely claiming that he did not review complaint reports every day, when investigators found that he did.

This move had an element of politics as well. In essence, the department opted to charge Mauriello with just one incident of crime report manipulation, when QAD’s July report suggested the misconduct was much broader.

Mauriello denied the charges. Mauriello’s union representative, Captain Roy Richter, told the
New York Times
that Mauriello “feels abandoned by the department he has faithfully served for over two decades.”

Two sergeants and two police officers were charged with failing to file a robbery complaint. Of the charges against the two sergeants, their union representative, Ed Mullins, told the
Times
, “In a nutshell, this is bogus.”

Browne described the issues at the 8-1 as isolated. While the filing of the disciplinary case was important, it was treated in isolation, and no broader review of the accuracy of the crime statistics was allowed.

It would have made sense if, presented with a major problem in one precinct that had not been picked up in a routine investigation by QAD, Kelly had ordered a broader review, if not a full-blown investigation, or recommended that an outside agency look into it to avoid the appearance of a conflict. But he didn’t do that, and Mayor Bloomberg backed him.

What Kelly did do at that point was appoint a deputy inspector named Daniel Carione to examine misconduct in the 81st Precinct, following on the Internal Affairs interim report. Carione had been the commanding officer of Queens Internal Affairs. He was tasked with reinterviewing 81st Precinct officers and listening to Schoolcraft’s recordings. Strangely, Carione was forced out of the NYPD the following year because he needed a hearing aid to continue working. His review of the 81st Precinct was never seen by the public. Carione sued the NYPD for wrongful termination. Kelly, by the way, wore hearing aids but was exempt from NYPD policy.

On October 10, the Associated Press finally got around to publishing its own story about Schoolcraft. In that story, police officials said Schoolcraft’s allegations about ticket quotas and fudged stats were taken seriously, but he was uncooperative in an investigation of them. They also viewed his case as an isolated incident, not a brewing corruption scandal.

On November 7, the
New York Daily News
published clear evidence of the existence of quotas in a different Brooklyn precinct. Memos from the 77th Precinct, which includes Crown Heights and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, showed that the precinct bosses were demanding 75 summonses a week for moving violations. An NYPD spokesman called the memos “unauthorized” and still insisted quotas did not exist.

This obviously was yet more proof that under the pressures of CompStat, precinct commanders were either getting the message from police headquarters or coming up with their own methods to deal with the demand. Either way, the effect was the same, and it showed the pitfalls of CompStat.

The following day, Mayor Bloomberg pledged to investigate the quota memos, saying, “Commissioner Kelly will look at it.” He also denied the existence of quotas. Once again, as with the Carione probe, nothing came of it. It was another blip that faded with the news cycle.

On November 8, Levitt distilled the open questions surrounding Schoolcraft, writing, “In the past year, no one from the police department has offered an explanation for Schoolcraft’s forced incarceration inside the mental ward. No one has been held accountable. No governmental agency has begun an investigation. Neither Kelly nor Mayor Bloomberg has uttered one word. No one has even offered an apology. Not one governmental official has called for an investigation into what may be a blatant department crime: systemic statistical abuses throughout the city’s police precincts.”