Fired ‘for doing his job’
Cop sues, sez he was axed for ticketing att’y with funky PBA card
A Westchester County rookie cop says he was fired for writing a ticket to a lawyer who tried to get out of it by giving him a police union courtesy card.
“It’s kind of mind-blowing,” Joseph Saetta told the Daily News. “I want my job back. I want my name cleared.
“I did nothing wrong.”
Saetta’s lawyer Peter Brill filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last Friday that seeks damages on the former officer’s behalf. He also filed in state Supreme Court what under New York law is known as an Article 78 proceeding, which asks that the Westchester County Public Safety Department reverse its decision to dismiss Saetta.
“He basically was fired from his job for doing his job,” Brill said. “He apparently violated some unwritten rule that you can’t give a ticket to someone who flashes one of these cards.”
The allegation mirrors those of NYPD Officer Matthew Bianchi, who the Daily News reported last year has alleged in a suit that he was punished by police brass for not always honoring Police Benevolent Association cards given by officers to friends and relatives.
That case is pending.
Both Saetta filings name Acting Public Safety Commissioner Terrance Raynor, who is accused of firing Saetta in January — just three months after he started, transferring from the Pleasantville Police Department — and George Latimer, in his role as Westchester County executive.
The suit also names Corinne Pascariu-Costo, the lawyer who allegedly complained to Saetta’s superiors after he issued her a summons on Dec. 3 for driving on the Saw Mill River Parkway with expired temporary tags on her Jeep Cherokee.
Saetta said in an interview he has no problem with using his discretion — as officers are trained to do — when deciding whether to give someone a ticket or let them off with a warning.
But Pascariu-Costo, he said, was “agitated” from the start.
“She was hostile as soon as approached,” said Saetta, 29. “She was unhappy that I pulled her over. And she didn’t have any photo ID. She had car dealership documents in the glove compartment, and she told me verbally her name and date of birth.”
Saetta said he didn’t recognize the courtesy card she had — and that the card didn’t list the name and number of the officer who gave it to her, meaning he couldn’t determine where it came from.
“What if [she] bought it on eBay?” Brill added. PBA cards are sold on the site.
When Saetta returned to his patrol car, he told his partner that Pascariu-Costo claimed her license, issued in Vermont, was in the trunk, but that he didn’t want her getting out of the car.
Saetta ran a check on her name and ultimately issued her one ticket — for the expired tags.
Pascariu-Costo did not respond to a request for comment.
Catherine Cioffi, a spokeswoman for Latimer, said in a statement that Saetta was “lawfully terminated for cause.”
“The Westchester County Department of Public Safety remains dedicated to the recruitment and retention of officers who uphold the highest standards of professionalism and respect in their service to the community,” she added.
A Public Safety Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Manhattan’s Upper West Side is awash with unlicensed weed shops — and the budding problem continues to grow worse.
At least 53 delis, smoke shops and grocery stores in the uptown neighborhood are hawking marijuana without licenses, according to a recent block-by-block survey conducted by a crack team of staffers from Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s office.
The survey findings, shared exclusively with the Daily News, mark a 104% increase over the 26 unlicensed pot shops that Brewer’s staff discovered when they conducted a similar survey in late 2022 of the same 54-block radius, from W. 54th St. to W. 108th St.
The latest survey, which was conducted in February, involved Brewer staffers inquiring about buying weed at 89 local shops that state records show do not hold marijuana sales licenses. The prior survey was conducted in November and December 2022 using the same methodology.
Brewer, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side, said the continued proliferation of off-the-books cannabis dealing in her backyard should be a clarion call for state lawmakers to beef up the city’s marijuana enforcement abilities. She also said she wishes the city would use its existing enforcement powers more aggressively.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” Brewer told The News. “We don’t understand why they’re not closed, why they’re not getting padlocked.”
Brewer said she plans to share the tally of unlicensed dispensaries in her district with state and city authorities in hopes it’ll result in more enforcement.
She plans to formally unveil the survey results during a press conference Thursday morning outside Zaza Waza Smoke Shop on Columbus Ave., one of the retailers on her list that’s located around the corner from her district office.
The Big Apple’s explosion of unlicensed weed sales started shortly after the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2021. While the move made consumption legal, the rollout of New York’s licensed weed sales industry has been hampered by delays, and there’s still only about two dozen shops in the city that hold permits to lawfully sell bud, state records show.
The foot-dragging in setting up a robust legal weed market has created a vacuum for unlicensed shops to crop up, and city officials estimate there are some
1,500 marijuana retailers operating across the five boroughs.
The problem has been compounded by the fact that state law currently doesn’t allow the city to set its own rules on enforcement against illicit cannabis sales.
Brewer’s staffers also found as part of their latest survey that only three of the 26 unlicensed shops they flagged in their initial 2022 canvass have closed down. Two of them — West Coast Convenience on 72nd St. and Amsterdam Varieties Corp. on Amsterdam Ave. — closed up shop last summer as part of a nonprosecution agreement with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, while the third one, 85 Convenient Store, recently shuttered for unknown reasons, Brewer’s team found.
In the meantime, shops have continued to pop up like weeds in Brewer’s district.
Just in the four weeks it took to complete the survey, Brewer’s staffers found that three brand-new unlicensed marijuana pushers opened up their doors.
This year’s state budget is expected to include a measure that would expedite court proceedings against unlicensed weed retailers and authorize local law enforcement agencies like the NYPD and the city sheriff’s office to execute directives from the state Office of Cannabis Management to shut down illicit shops. At the moment, only state authorities can execute such directives.
But Brewer argued the state budget proposal on the table isn’t not going far enough — a view shared by Mayor Adams — since it would still require the city to get state permission to shutter shops.
On top of the budget provision, Brewer said a subdivision must be added to state law allowing any cities across New York with more than 1 million residents to write their own laws as it relates to cannabis enforcement.
“The City Council and the mayor should be able to do it,” she said. “There should be a very fast process to padlock. You always have to have due process, but it has to be a fast process. A place can’t be fined and then a year later it’s still open.”
There are steps the city should be taking on its own in the interim, she also argued.
She questioned why the NYPD isn’t taking a more leading role in enforcement against illicit cannabis retailers. At the moment, Brewer said that’s mostly a job carried out by the sheriff’s office, but that agency’s clip of inspecting suspected unlicensed cannabis stores slowed down last year, and meanwhile state authorities have failed to collect on millions of dollars in fines levied against marijuana-peddling scofflaws, the news outlet The City reported last month.
A spokeswoman for the mayor said the city has conducted 46,000 cannabis inspections, issued over 17,000 summonses and collected over $18 million in fines since Adams took office in January 2022.
The spokeswoman said the city must get more help from the state, though.
“That’s why Mayor Adams has been clear in his call for Albany to give New York City the power to shut down these illegal shops,” said the spokeswoman, Liz Garcia. “The administration is continuing to work with the governor’s office and our state partners to give municipalities the power to enforce against, inspect, and close illegal dispensaries more quickly and efficiently.”
Asked about Brewer’s proposal for more city autonomy, Avi Small, a spokesman for Gov. Hochul, said the governor supports letting the city carry out its own cannabis enforcement.
“Her budget proposal authorizing localities to swiftly and permanently close unlicensed shops is the most effective way to get the job done,” Small said.
Besides quality-of-life concerns connected with unlicensed weed shops, Brewer said she’s worried that letting them go unchecked is hampering the few retailers that have actually obtained licenses to sell marijuana legally.
“The ones that are licensed are being hurt by these shops,” she said.