PROBE TARGETS FAST & LOOSE FINEST
After stories by News, city panel to eye cases of officers accused of abusing regs
A blue-ribbon panel investigating abuses of the disciplinary system in the NYPD has requested records of several controversial cases that were first exposed by the Daily News.
The panel will seek to determine whether cops with connections get treated with kid gloves, and whether high-ranking NYPD officials meddle in cases, sources said.
Probers plan to review the outcomes of cases involving a detective who padded his reports with phony info from fake witnesses; an assistant chief who allegedly fudged the facts to scuttle an investigation into his own misconduct; and the son of a chief arrested for copping a feel in a casino who kept his job.
“Nothing is off-limits; the review is soup to nuts,” a source told The News.
The panel — convened by NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill this year in response to a series of exposés by the Daily News — requested details on several hundred case files and thousands of additional items from the Police Department.
“We fully expect them to request, and we will provide them with any additional information or files they may seek to review, and we look forward to their findings,” said Assistant Chief Patrick Conry, a police spokesman.
The panel includes former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, former Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers and former Manhattan federal judge Barbara Jones.
One of the case files requested is
for Detective Thomas Rice, who made up fake witnesses and phony addresses to close grand larceny cases in the 106th Precinct in Ozone Park, Queens. He was caught in 2013 but lost only 20 vacation days and got to keep his detective rank.
After The News exposed Rice’s behavior in January, the NYPD conducted a second investigation, found more falsifications, demoted him, docked him 60 vacation days and forced him to retire. In June, Queens prosecutors indicted him, and he pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of official misconduct.
The panel, the sources said, is examining several other cases exposed by The News:
Lt. Adam Lamboy, the influential Manhattan Special Victims commander, was caught in 2013 getting paid for hundreds of hours of regular time and overtime he did not work and falsifying time records, as The News reported in March.
Lamboy was allowed to keep his job. He was only forced to retire in 2015 after the department learned he and a detective acted inappropriately with a rape victim in Seattle.
Assistant Chief Jeffrey Maddrey got into a screaming argument with a paramour named Tabatha Foster in 2015. When cops arrived, he pulled rank and waved them off. In violation of NYPD rules, the incident was never reported.
The Internal Affairs Bureau questioned the chief in May 2016, but Maddrey gave misleading statements that blocked the investigation — committing a second rules violation.
Then, in 2017, Deputy Commissioner Kevin Richardson, of the department advocate’s office, tossed the most serious charges, allegedly over the objections of his staff.
After the News article was published, the city Department of Investigation launched a probe of the case.
In April, Police Commissioner James O’Neill docked Maddrey 45 days, but allowed him to keep his rank and his position as an assistant chief at Brooklyn North.
Officer Joseph Essig, 25 – the son of a chief – was caught on security video at Harrah’s Casino in Atlantic City grabbing the rear end of another man’s girlfriend, as The News disclosed in April. He was arrested by Atlantic City police, pleaded guilty to a health code violation and paid a $1,000 fine.
Essig was a probationary cop at the time, meaning he had no job protection. He could have been fired at any time for any reason. But he kept his job – a fact that stunned some cops.
Officer Kevin Lynch, 25, another probationary cop, was off-duty sitting in a car in 2016 with another cop, who accidentally fired his gun. Lynch — the son of powerful police union boss Patrick Lynch — did not report the incident, a serious violation of NYPD rules. But he, too, kept his job.
“Many high-level phone calls were made on Lynch’s behalf,” a source said.
Retired Capt. Warner Frey told The News in May that senior officials often meddled in his probes when he was head of Detective Borough Investigations. The chiefs, he said, would pressure him to go easy on cops they liked and hammer cops they didn’t like.
The panel has already met with top lawyers with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and is planning to meet with Richardson of the department advocate’s office, civil rights lawyers, and sit in on a meeting with the Commission to Combat Police Corruption.
It will also likely examine the NYPD’s stance that all police personnel records are confidential under state Civil Rights Law 50-a, including disciplinary records. That position, critics say, creates a lack of transparency and allows the department to operate in secret.
None of the panel members responded to requests for comment.