3 more ‘cop’ to fake OT
Bogus arrest time
Three more accused “collars for cash” cops admitted to multiple overtime and procedural errors on the witness stand in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday — with one admitting to fudging her OT and another to being “lazy” in making a memo-book entry.
But despite admitting to sloppy record-keeping, the cops, like a colleague one day earlier, stopped short of testifying that there is an institutionalized NYPD scam — “collars for cash” — in which officers make bogus, late-shift arrests to jack up their overtime.
“I’m being lazy at the end of the day,” NYPD Detective John Essig admitted of a memo-book entry from early in the day of plaintiff Hector Cordero’s arrest.
“It was lazy, and I didn’t look back and fix the error,” Essig said of writing “15:35,” or 3:35 p.m., as the time for a marijuana arrest that actually happened at 11:20 a.m.
Cordero — busted for and then cleared of felony cocaine possession — sued the NYPD in federal court, claiming that Bushwick cops violated his civil rights by ginning up the charges against him so they could run up their overtime pay.
Under examination by Cordero’s lawyer Gabriel Harvis, Essig admitted that he had put nothing in his memo book about Cordero’s arrest that night in October 2014.
Essig further admitted that he did not review relevant security-camera footage or interview any poten- tial witnesses to Cordero’s alleged drug sale.
“Fair to say, to your knowledge, there are really no rules about who is eligible for overtime?” the lawyer asked at another point.
“There are rules,” Essig protested on the witness stand.
The lawyer then confronted Essig with a transcript of a pretrial deposition, directing him to read aloud from page 126, line six.
“There are really no rules,” Essig read aloud.
The lawyer asked Essig if he had indeed said that. Essig confirmed he had, and the lawyer said he had no further questions.
Also Wednesday, Officer Lynette Reyes, who typed Cordero’s arrest info into the NYPD system, admitted that she erred on her own memo book that day.
Reyes claimed she started her shift at 7 a.m., when she’d actually come in two hours later; the fib entitled her to 90 minutes of OT, she admitted.
Arresting officer Peter Rubin closed out the day by testifying that his memobook notation of Cordero’s arrest time was 50 minutes off.
On Tuesday, the first defendant cop, Officer Hugo Hugasian, admitted that he had put in for overtime he hadn’t earned on four occasions in 2007 and 2008.