The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (36 page)

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Another boss blamed CompStat. “COs [commanders] were belittled, humiliated, ambushed and embarrassed in from of (and by) the brass. . . . After one beating, you’d have to be a consummate idiot to report higher crime stats next time.”

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“Sometimes the report that is entered into the system is not what the street officer had written and it is changed without the knowledge or consent of the officer. Many times, 61s (crime complaint reports) were totally re-written. The average person is totally discouraged and a report will be taken to placate them only till they leave and another report will be done downgrading the original report.”

And finally, there was this comment: “Heard Deputy Commissioner [name withheld] say in a pre-CompStat meeting that a CO should just consolidate burglaries that occurred in an apartment building and count as one, make crime reporting difficult to discourage victims, shred reports for those with no insurance, value theft from stores as wholesale not retail prices, reckless endangerment used instead of attempted assault. . . . ” This last phrase sounds a lot like an order coming not from a precinct commander but from the very top of the department.

Eterno and Silverman larded their comments with a couple of shots at the NYPD’s criticism of their prior survey—a “barrage of spin” and an “impotent response” as they called it. And in a bit of grandiosity in closing, they quoted Frank Serpico in his remarks 40 years ago in the Knapp Commission hearings, calling for “an independent permanent investigative body to deal with police corruption.”

The survey got a day or two of media bounce and then faded. Browne, Kelly’s spokesman, sniffed at the survey and dismissed it, citing other research.

Meanwhile, here and there, more evidence of police downgrading of crime surfaced, yet it did not seem to affect the public debate.

In an article published on September 16, 2012, the
New York Times
reviewed more than 100 police reports from the preceding four months and found a number of cases in which the police classified a crime as a misdemeanor despite a narrative that suggested a more serious offense.

Joseph Goldstein’s article quoted an anonymous police supervisor who said that it was common for sergeants and lieutenants to “tweak complaint reports” or “change the facts of the situation to make it a non-felony crime.”

This allegation provided additional confirmation of what Schoolcraft had asserted more than 18 months before.

Goldstein also quoted a retired detective first grade, Wilford Pinkney. “Do I feel that supervisors based on some real or perceived pressure may reclassify crimes? Yes,” he said.

Pinkney told Goldstein he did not believe there existed a “concerted effort” from police headquarters to misclassify crimes, but he said that among lower-level supervisors, there was “a pressure people feel” to not exceed last year’s crime numbers.

Kelly’s panel on the crime statistics, formed in January 2011, still had not issued a report. It was now 19 months overdue. While those close to the commission insisted that its work was proceeding, with the mayoral election just over a year away, it continued to seem like the police commissioner was trying to run out the clock.

It was as if the police department’s upper echelon was merely playing whack-a-mole each time someone came forward with evidence of quotas (“productivity goals”), downgrading (“minuscule”), and stop and frisks (“based on crime locations, not race”). Nothing seemed to really stick despite years of revelations about these matters.

That is what remains so odd about this story. By the end of 2012, there had been dozens of reports of issues surrounding Schoolcraft’s treatment, numerous officers had stepped forward, the NYPD’s stop and frisk campaign
was under fire, there was a lot of evidence of quotas, and yet the only entity powerful enough to take on the city—the U.S. Attorney’s office—sat in the grandstand watching it all unfold.

On the other hand, as 2013 loomed, there were two factors that were beginning to build that could ultimately really bring these issues front and center in the political landscape. First, four major lawsuits were working their way ever closer to trial. The first was the Center for Constitutional Rights’s stop and frisk class action, known as
Floyd v. City of New York
(expected to trial March 2013). The second was
Stinson v. City of New York
, the quota class action, and the third was the Schoolcraft case.

The fourth was a lawsuit filed by Craig Matthews, a police officer assigned to the Bronx’s 42nd Precinct, who alleged that he was punished and his free speech rights were violated when he complained about a quota system in his precinct. Matthews claimed that his commanders actually used color-coded computer reports to track productivity of officers. Cops who weren’t making their quotas got red ink. The pressure led to unjustified stops, summonses, and arrests, he alleged, and “pitted police officers against each other, straining professional relationships and diverting resources away from law-enforcement activities.”

The case had been dismissed six months earlier in district court, but the appellate court overturned the decision. Now it would return to district court and proceed—setting up the potential for a series of similar challenges by police officers.

“Accepting Matthews’ allegations as true, it is undisputed that his speech addressed a matter of public concern,” the appellate court ruled.

The second factor was related to an upcoming election. In November 2013, the city will elect a new mayor for the first time in 12 years, as Bloomberg’s third and final term comes to an end. It has been 25 years since the city last had a Democratic mayor. A bill to create an NYPD Inspector General with subpoena power was introduced in June 2012 by 22 council members. The Inspector General, under the proposed bill, would have substantial authority to review policy, conduct investigations, and most importantly, would have subpoena power to compel testimony and production of documents. Not surprising, Bloomberg and Kelly were violently opposed to it. A few months later, the bill was said to have close to a veto-proof majority.

As the Schoolcraft case lumbered along, really not very much happened after the controversy over how the QAD report became public in March. Part of this was because of the city and the hospital’s strategy to delay, delay, delay. String out the case until the Schoolcrafts can’t handle it, and force them to settle, if for no other reason than they need the money. Cases often start out with high expectations and lofty language, and after three years of bickering, it becomes just about the number of zeros on the check.

Outwardly, the Schoolcraft lawsuit was progressing slowly through the court. Behind the scenes, trouble was brewing in the Schoolcraft camp. Adrian was becoming disgusted with the pace of the litigation and upset with some of the decisions his lawyers were making. So, during the summer of 2012, Adrian went silent, refusing to speak with anyone, even me, even the lawyers. He barely spoke to his father. This was understandable given the strain he was under, but it also caused some frustration from Norinsberg.

The central issue in the struggle over the case was that the Schoolcrafts wanted to issue broad subpoena and document demands on the city, while they thought Norinsberg wanted to narrow discovery and limit the case. The Schoolcrafts wanted to go to trial, but they felt their lawyer just wanted to settle the case and move on.

Norinsberg later told me nothing could be further from the truth. “We never had any discussion internally or externally about settlement,” he said. “This case was 100 percent going to trial from day one.”

In August, the two sides met in Albany and called a truce. “They vowed to do what Adrian wants them to do,” Larry said.

The truce was short-lived. Over the next six weeks, there were a series of shouting matches over the phone between Larry and the lawyers. On August 28, Larry told Norinsberg, “A lot of things we discussed in the meeting on the ninth aren’t coming true,” he said.

By September 10, 2012, Larry was angry again, especially about the push back from their lawyers on discovery requests. “The stuff that we asked for two years ago that Jon shot down, we would have now if we had asked them back then and Jon knows that,” Larry fumed. “You can’t have this subjective garbage. It will boomerang on you in court. You want to be as prepared as you can and you don’t want to let people wiggle out of it.”

Norinsberg later said, “We did have differences in strategy, mainly about higher level city officials. Preparing a 7-hour deposition takes two weeks. It’s not a gimme. I don’t know if they [the Schoolcrafts] understood that.”

And then something happened that really pushed the Schoolcrafts to the breaking point. On September 18, Norinsberg asked Judge Sweet to extend the discovery deadline another 120 days, effectively delaying the case further. He noted that he, Cohen, and Fitch had been involved in five other trials since that April.

At that point, the Schoolcrafts were getting antsy for movement. The lawsuit was two years old, and not much of consequence had happened between the legal wrangling and the constant delays.

On the following day, Norinsberg did a second thing that infuriated Adrian and Larry. He agreed to an “attorney’s eyes only” stipulation regarding the discovery documents in the case. In other words, neither Adrian nor Larry would be able to examine any documents in their own lawsuit. According to Larry, Norinsberg didn’t tell them right away that he had signed this agreement. When they found out, they were livid.

They never wanted a protective order in the first place, and now they themselves couldn’t read the documents. “How can Adrian mount his case without being able to read the documents?” Larry asked. “It’s outrageous.”

But Norinsberg saw it as a strategic necessity. “When the QAD report came out, the city stopped cooperating,” he said. “Our solution was to have an attorney’s eyes only stipulation so we could keep moving forward with discovery. It was just a temporary measure.”

This was the final straw in a relationship that had been souring behind the scenes for months. And all the negative feelings came spilling out.

Norinsberg’s SchoolcraftJustice.com website was initially supposed to be used to bring attention to the case, gather more evidence of downgrading and quotas, and promote reform ideas that Adrian had. But the Schoolcrafts complained that the site was just a way to promote the firm and garner more business.

And after that initial glow of publicity following the filing of the lawsuit, Norinsberg, Fitch, and Cohen largely stopped cooperating with the media, Larry said. “Norinsberg cut everyone out because he wanted control of the flow of information, control of the story, he wanted a one-way street,”
Larry Schoolcraft said. “We lost some momentum there, but we didn’t really noticed that until much later.”

By October 1, the Schoolcrafts were so frustrated they were talking about firing their lawyers. “They haven’t done shit for two years, and now they just want to rush everything,” Larry fumed on October 1, a coolish Monday afternoon. “They want to barebones it and shove it in front of a jury. They keep saying this case is not an indictment of the NYPD, but it is.”

They were also upset that Norinsberg couldn’t stop Sweet from ordering Adrian to be deposed for a third time.

“It all comes down to communication,” Larry said. “This case is too important.”

Schoolcraft, having already been deposed once, was set to be deposed twice more on October 11 and October 25. Meanwhile, not one of the city’s witnesses had been deposed by Norinsberg.

On October 14, after Adrian returned from that second deposition with the city, father and son had had enough of their lawyers. That Sunday afternoon, they sat down and drafted a letter firing Norinsberg, Fitch, and Cohen from the case.

On Thursday, November 7, Adrian finally finished editing the letter to Norinsberg into a single terse paragraph and sent it to his lawyer via certified mail. Larry gave me and Levitt, the highly regarded police reporter and author, a heads up.

Levitt, the next morning, immediately called Norinsberg and asked him for comment. Norinsberg had not yet seen the letter, and he was furious. According to Levitt’s subsequent column, Norinsberg said, “The father wants us to go after Kelly [Police Commissioner Ray Kelly], Bloomberg [Mayor Michael Bloomberg], the FBI, everyone under the sun. We’ve had a complete communications breakdown.”

“This comes completely out of the blue,” Norinsberg continued, ignoring the conflict of the previous months. “Adrian has stayed in my house and we’ve never had a bad word. Until I hear otherwise from Adrian, I’m still representing him.”

Levitt, paraphrasing, wrote that Norinsberg had told him “the Schoolcrafts’ behavior has become increasingly bizarre.”

“They have disappeared three times in the last six months,” Norinsberg told Levitt. “We literally had to have [Frank] Serpico involved to track them down.”

For his part, Larry told Levitt that Norinsberg “doesn’t tell us anything. He makes deals behind our backs. We need a leader. We need an architect.”

Levitt went on to write that allies of theirs “expressed concern that they may be alienating the very people they need to hold the police department accountable.”

“Nobody denies that whistleblowers can be difficult,” he noted. “Anyone who singlehandedly takes on a gigantic organization like the NYPD, as Adrian  has, comes under  tremendous psychological and emotional pressures.”

Levitt then quoted Serpico as saying, “The department wants to undermine all that they stand for by painting them as malcontents, nuts, psychos. The danger for Adrian is that his message may be lost and the department let off the hook.”

Norinsberg later said he was caught off-guard by Levitt’s call. “That was the first time I heard about it,” he said. “I was enormously disappointed and very frustrated not to be part of the case.”

In the aftermath, Adrian and Larry suffered one of their worst arguments yet. As Larry described it, Adrian blamed him for these events. Larry responded, as he had many times, that Adrian needed to step up and take command of the case. Larry described him as laying on the couch, almost inert, as if knocked down by a bad wave and unable to get back up.