16 NYPD Officers Ordered to Surrender in Ticket-Fixing

Prosecutors today began notifying more than a dozen New York City police officers that they must surrender by midnight to face charges in a long-running investigation into the widespread practice of fixing tickets for colleagues, family members and friends, several people with knowledge of the matter said.

Most of the 16 officers who are expected to face charges are officials in the union that represents officers, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, the people said. Also among those facing charges are two sergeants and a lieutenant, the people said.

The accusations against the men, one of the people said, were included in several indictments containing a total of as many as 1,000 counts. Ten of the officers were expected to be charged with multiple counts of fixing tickets, while six were expected to be charged with unrelated corruption counts, the people said.

The ticket charges will involve more than 300 traffic summonses that were fixed, one of the people said, noting that about 800 instances of ticket-fixing arose during the three-year inquiry.

The alleged crimes unrelated to ticket-fixing include narcotics corruption, covering up an assault and, in the case of a lieutenant who had been assigned to the Internal Affairs Bureau and worked on the case in its early stages, leaking information about it to union officials, the people have said. The lieutenant is expected to be charged with a misdemeanor.

Five civilians were also expected to be charged in the case, including two drug dealers, one of the people said.

The investigation began in December 2008 with an anonymous complaint that an officer in the 40th Precinct, in the Bronx, was providing protection for a drug dealer, several of the people have said. After investigators developed enough information to obtain a court-ordered wiretap on the officer, they began hearing conversations about fixing tickets, the people said.

A grand jury in the case heard from about 80 witnesses over about six months, the people said. They voted over a period of several weeks, with the ticket-fixing charges including grand larceny, tampering with public records, conspiracy and official misconduct, the people said.

{NY Times/Matzav.com Newscenter}