IT’S AN ANIMAL ‘HOUSE’
It’s a precinct with a past — a place of low crime but its share of troubled cops.
Downtown Brooklyn’s 84th Precinct station house, where ex-detective and accused prostitution ringleader Ludwig Paz spent most of his NYPD career, has been tarnished by scandal over the years.
It’s where Stephen Caracappa (inset top) worked in the detective squad in the late 1980s while secretly carrying out Mafia hits as a paid assassin for the Lucchese crime family. He and his cohort, Detective Louis Eppolito, were convicted of murder, corruption and racketeering and sentenced to life in 2009. He died in prison last year.
In 1987, Cedric Roberson (inset center), also a detective, was arrested and charged with sodomy after he adopted a teenage boy, then allegedly assaulted him, said Detective Tom Hickey, there from 1977 to 1995.
Hickey also told The Post a detective once agreed to have his blood tested, “and it came back with heroin, cocaine, uppers, downers,” he said. “The lab guy said, ‘I’ve never seen such a report.’ ”
And then there was the precinct’s “Porky’s” moment.
A policewoman who worked there said that she was once changing in the women’s locker room and “heard a noise.”
“I got up and looked and saw there was this little hole [in a wall] and an eyeball looking at us” — just like in the bawdy ’80s screen comedy.
She didn’t report the incident because her supervisor told her that if she did, “all the guys would get transferred out of there.” Back when Paz started at the 84th, it was known as a freewheeling workplace where supervisors gave cops wide latitude. In the early 90s, several officers gathered to do a prostitution sting, including a tall, strapping male cop who sashayed into the station house dressed in an undercover outfit that featured a wig, push-up bra and high heels. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” he announced to wild laughter.
“The bosses were good. It had to be fun,” said Hickey. “You had a lot of active cops who couldn’t be active because there wasn’t that much crime.” He called former commanding officer William Dwyer (inset bottom) “a real good guy.”
But even Dwyer had an ignominious end to his career. He showed up tipsy to a meeting in 1995 and was forced to retire.
On a far more sombre note, three heroic 84th cops recently died in the line of duty: Officer Alain Schaberger in 2011 after being pushed down a stairwell, and officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, who were assassinated in their car in 2014.