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January 23, 2008 - New York Times (NY)

Drugs-For-Information Scandal Shakes Up New York Police Narcotics Force

By Al Baker

Return to Drug War News: Don't Miss Archive

In the world of urban policing, few relationships are as fraught with peril as those between narcotics officers and confidential informants. These informants -- C.I.'s in police parlance -- are often small-time criminals who are paid or get criminal charges dropped in return for information about other, theoretically more dangerous criminals.

Now four police officers in Brooklyn are under arrest in a case that involves paying informants not with cash or leniency but with the very drugs they craved, taken from the dealers who were arrested after the informants pointed them out. Two of the officers were charged in an internal sting last week after another was caught on a department audio tape bragging about the practice in September, officials said.

Prosecutors have moved to dismiss more than 80 criminal cases because the officers caught in the scandal were considered critical to successful prosecutions, law enforcement officials said, and the office of the Brooklyn district attorney is analyzing about 100 more potentially tainted cases.

Three additional officers have been suspended without pay and stripped of their guns and badges; two others have been placed on modified assignment -- they lose their guns and badges but still receive paychecks -- and about a dozen more have been switched to desk duty. They will be barred from taking enforcement action, like making drug arrests, until the scope of the wrongdoing is determined, officials said.

Four high-level supervisors have been transferred, and a new commander -- Deputy Chief Joseph J. Reznick -- has been brought in to supervise the department's Narcotics Division.

The concept of using drugs to compensate confidential informants -- mainly people familiar with street culture and criminal habits -- is not new. Raymond J. Abruzzi, once chief of Brooklyn detectives, who retired in 1996, said it was illegal but commonplace 30 years ago, "mainly because the department did not have a lot of money to pay the informants."

But the continuing corruption investigation offers a striking example of officers who appeared to have gone too far to make arrests, in a way that is now aggressively condemned. One law enforcement official even called it "noble-cause corruption."

"What it looks like to me is that these guys took a shortcut and shortcuts will get you in trouble and shortcuts will get you in jail," Mr. Abruzzi said.

"For them to become, in essence, crack dealers, shame on them," Mr. Abruzzi said. "The question is: 'Were they lazy? Was it an accepted practice in the unit? And, if so, why would it become accepted?' Either way it is wrong; it is against the law and it is against our rules and no matter how you slice it, it is corruption."

The officers caught in the scandal are part of two 10-person "modules" or teams of officers assigned to the Brooklyn South narcotics bureau, which is staffed by 260 officers who work under the umbrella of the Police Department's 1,400-member Narcotics Division.

The arrests were first reported on Tuesday in The Daily News.

Several officials said it appeared to be a case of a handful of wayward officers in one command -- as opposed to systemic activity enmeshed in the culture of the department's antinarcotics efforts -- though others may be involved. One official said one or two more officers may ultimately face criminal charges and others might face suspension.

"Additional suspensions may occur as the investigation proceeds," said Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman. He said there had been "some cooperation from officers assigned to Brooklyn South in the case," but he declined to elaborate.

At the same time, the case raises questions about supervision of narcotics officers. Two of those arrested -- Sgt. Michael Arenella, 31, and Officer Jerry Bowens, 31 -- worked on the midnight shift. The lack of supervision for officers working in the middle of the night, who are often the least experienced in the department, has been in the past a chief reason that sloppy, even criminal behavior has taken hold.

The two others charged -- Detective Sean Johnstone, 34, and Officer Julio Alvarez, 30 -- worked in a unit that covered both days and nights, officials said.

In a statement, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said, "I have full confidence in the ability and integrity of the Internal Affairs Bureau of the N.Y.P.D., and we are working closely with them."

The case began last year, when officials said Detective Johnstone and Officer Alvarez, who both joined the force in 2001, claimed to have recovered 17 plastic bags of cocaine, rather than the 28 bags they actually recovered from a drug suspect Sept. 13 in Brooklyn. A day later, Detective Johnstone, in a police vehicle, was overheard on a departmental tape recording bragging to another officer -- not Officer Alvarez -- about the practice of keeping drugs to give them to informants, officials said.

Investigators heard the tape later, and in December, Detective Johnstone and Officer Alvarez were each charged with official misconduct, falsifying business records and filing false documents. What happened to the 11 missing bags of drugs is not clear, officials said.

Officials said the man Detective Johnstone and Officer Alvarez arrested, Michael Pratt, was later an informant against them, telling internal investigators that the officers had taken more drugs from him than they claimed -- a fact that would, under normal circumstances, not be in his best interest to admit.

Peter E. Brill, a lawyer for the Detectives' Endowment Association who is representing Detective Johnstone, said that his client "avows his innocence and he will aggressively fight the charges against him."

A wider inquiry by the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau led to the arrests of Sergeant Arenella and Officer Bowens last week, officials said. It was not known if the sergeant and officer were the specific focuses of what is known as an integrity test, or if they were simply the only ones to fail.

According to officials and court papers, Sergeant Arenella, who joined the force in 1999, and Officer Bowens, who has been a police officer since 1995, took a portion of drugs and cash they recovered in November and provided it to a confidential informant as payback for pointing out the suspect, who was actually an undercover police officer.

Sergeant Arenella and Officer Bowens recovered 40 plastic bags of cocaine and $250, but later claimed to have recovered only 38 bags of the drugs and $210 in cash, giving the rest, enough for personal use, to the informant as payback, the officials said.

The police disclosed the arrests at 3:44 a.m. on Saturday, in an e-mail message to reporters.

Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly transferred Deputy Chief James O'Neill, the commander of the department's narcotics operations, as well as Inspector James O'Connell, the commander of the Brooklyn South narcotics bureau. Two captains in that bureau, John Maldari and Joseph Terranova, were also transferred, officials said.

Officer Bowens's lawyer, Edward J. Mandery, said that by the officials' own accounts, his client was not shaking down drug dealers or robbing them for his own profit. "So, it is a situation where obviously it is unfortunate but it seems to me the intentions were to apprehend the bad guy, not line his pockets, not falsely arrest someone," he said. "This is a case where they are trying to stop the drug dealing and, according to the district attorney's office, went too far."

Andrew C. Quinn, a lawyer for Sergeant Arenella, said his client had engaged in no criminal wrongdoing.

Note: Reporting was contributed by Ann Farmer, Christine Hauser, William K. Rashbaum, Matthew Sweeney and Carolyn Wilder.

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