Wiretap Recordings Catch NYPD Using Racial Slurs
Once again the NYPD is in the news, and it’s not for helping to enforce the law.
Officers were heard making racist remarks on wiretaps used in a ticket-fixing investigation, according to recent reports.
The investigation started in the Bronx, New York, as a probe into a cop suspected of drug ties, however according to prosecutors, the investigation quickly took a turn as numerous officers were caught on tape discussing fixing tickets.
"There's overtly racist language," one source told the New York Daily News. "And it gets a lot worse than that."
Seventeen police officers have already been indicted for using the shocking language and experts are saying that even more could be in trouble as hundreds of officers were caught on tape.
The prosecutors have worked to keep the transcripts of the wiretaps private, but one example of an officer in trouble is Officer Peter Hans. Hans was caught on the wire making critical comments about the Bronx “ghettos” from which he in part gained vacation days for getting tickets fixed.
Two juries have already acquitted two accused criminals, one accused of murder, arrested by cops in the scandal, in part because they did not believe the officers’ testimony.
"If a Bronx jury hears a cop call someone a n----r or an animal, everything else they say goes out the window," said one veteran defense lawyer whose client was arrested by a cop involved in the scandal.
The cops are expected to appear in front of Bronx Supreme Court Justice Steven Barrett this week on charges that range from perjury and bribery to grand larceny and obstruction, but this isn’t the first time the NYPD has been in hot water.
Just a few weeks ago a federal judge in New York ruled on a class action suit against the NYPD, based on claims that its stop-and-frisk policies unfairly target Blacks and Latinos. In 2008, a city cop was accused of using a baton to sodomize a Brooklyn tattoo artist and just two years prior, three New York police officers killed Sean Bell, an unarmed Black man, outside of a strip club hours before his wedding.
For the sake of all victims involved, may justice be served.
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(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)