Lawline.com

Testimony by Steve Anderson, a former undercover officer, revealed the extent of corruption in the New York City Narcotics units.  About 3 years ago, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that officers in Brooklyn were not vouchering (creating an official invoice and properly tracking) all the drugs they seized as evidence. At the time, the officers claimed that the officers were using the “off the book” drugs as rewards for those who provided information, a kind of “noble corruption”, which helped them do their jobs. However, after Anderson’s testimony, it appears that what these untracked drugs were actually used for was nothing that could, in any way, be termed “noble”: they were planted on people when narcotics officers needed to meet their arrest quotas.

As an example, Mr. Anderson cites a time when he bought cocaine from a DJ at a club as part of a buy-and-bust operation, but then gave some of the drugs to a fellow officer who had not met his quotas. The second officer then planted the drugs on two people at the club that had nothing to with the sale; a practice of “attaching bodies” to drugs.

As a result of the scandals, prosecutors in Brooklyn and Queens had to dismiss about 400 criminal cases that were tainted by the involvement of officers named in the scandal. In many of the cases people were able to walk away despite damning evidence, because evidence could no longer be trusted. Lawyers have filed claims for wrongful incarceration on the behalf of those arrested by these officers, and the city is settling the cases for about $1,000 an hour of imprisonment.

Prosecutors who are working on the trials of corrupt officers say that there is a conspiracy in the Police Department to cover up procedural and ethical violations by routinely falsifying records and keeping stashes of narcotics. And if Anderson’s testimony is to be believed, the corruption was indeed wide spread and pervasive, involving everyone from “ supervisors or undercovers [to] investigators”.