And then we find out that Betty isn’t the only victim of this crooked cop; in fact, as Detective Gonzalez’s victims go, Betty is actually small change. After the Suffolk County DA announces the indictment, nine other people come forward to tell us that they gave money to Detective Gonzalez as well—a total of close to $700,000—to help him out of some jam or other, and then he started ducking them and never gave them their money back. Some of the victims are lonely-heart types like Betty, some are just casual friends and acquaintances. And when we ask them why they would trust Detective Gonzalez enough to give him that kind of money, they all say the same thing: We trusted him because he’s an NYPD cop.
But the truth, as you may already have guessed, is that Detective Gonzalez isn’t an NYPD cop, or any other kind of cop; we figured that out within a couple hours after Betty first called us. When we search his house, we find the phony detective’s gold shield and the NYPD uniforms and gear that he bought on the Internet, and the awards and plaques that he had made up at a trophy shop, and the attaboy letters he wrote for himself. Angel Gonzalez is a con man, but he’s definitely not a cop, and never has been.
Instead, Angel Gonzalez is, or was, a police impersonator. And he’s not alone. At any given time there are hundreds, even thousands of them out there across the country.
And in New York City, if they’re committing a serious crime, it’s IAB’s job to catch them.
* * *
It’s easy to become a fake cop.
Fifteen minutes on the Internet can get you decked out with a uniform, handcuffs, a police radio and scanner, emergency lights and sirens for your car, a realistic-looking fake ID with any name and law enforcement agency you want on it, and a badge that’s an almost perfect knockoff of an NYPD shield or any other local, state, or federal law enforcement agency badge. True, New York law prohibits the sale of NYPD uniforms and replica shields, and federal law prohibits the sale of FBI or other federal agency badges—but when did that ever stop people from buying stuff over the Internet? (In fact, even though it’s against NYPD rules, most NYPD cops carry “dupes”—duplicate shields—because they’re worried about losing their real shields, which have to be turned in when they leave the Department or are promoted.) There are also bounty hunter and security guard “schools” that, for a hefty fee, will outfit you with a phony badge and ID and also teach you how to do cop stuff, like how to slap handcuffs on somebody. Or you could save your money and just watch some crime shows on TV.
Some of the people who buy police badges and gear are collectors or police buffs who don’t do any harm. Others are more serious wannabes, guys who like to carry badges or dress up as cops, who derive some psychological satisfaction from the power and authority the badge and the uniform project, which is fine as long as they only do it in the privacy of their own homes. But unless it’s Halloween, if they go out in public in what appears to be an actual police uniform, or carry what appears to be a real police officer’s badge, and if there’s any intent to deceive others into believing that they’re real cops or to exercise authority over them, under New York law it’s criminal impersonation, and they can be arrested.
Same thing with the cars. You’ll sometimes see cop buffs drive around in stripped-down old Crown Victorias with multiple antennas, listening to calls on a police scanner and then showing up at crime scenes to gawk from behind the yellow tape. Nothing illegal about that, but if they also outfit the Crown Vic with a siren and emergency lights in the grille, that’s a Vehicle and Traffic Law violation—and if they actually turn on the siren and the emergency lights to get somebody to pull over or whatever, now we’re back into criminal impersonation.
Sometimes police impersonators are just trying to impress somebody—a girl they’ve met in a nightclub, someone at a party. They’ll puff themselves up, flash a badge, and say: I’m a cop . . . or better yet, an undercover cop, which sounds much more dangerous and glamorous. Most people won’t question them, or look too closely at the badge.
Other impersonators actively try to intimidate people who annoy or anger them. It’s especially common in “road rage” incidents. Somebody cuts them off in traffic, and suddenly they’re waving a phony badge out the window and trying to get them to pull over.
For example, in 2007 a forty-nine-year-old rabbi from a Manhattan temple was arrested after repeatedly pulling up beside slow-moving drivers on suburban highways, flashing a badge inscribed with “Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority—Officer 1338” on it—a complete fake—and shouting: Police! Pull over! A couple of drivers actually did, after which the rabbi got out of his car and started screaming at them for holding up traffic. After his arrest he explained that he hated people who drive too slowly; his lawyer said he had bipolar disorder. Except for the rabbi part, this wasn’t unusual; it happens all the time.
Some police impersonators are simply trying to save a buck. If they get pulled over for a traffic stop they’ll flash a phony badge they got over the Internet—Junior G-Man, Honorary Fire Marshal, whatever—in the hope that the cop will just wave them on without actually looking at it. But cops are wise to that dodge, and if the guy actually claims to be a police officer—if he says, Yeah, I’m a cop—then it’s criminal impersonation and he’s under arrest. Same thing with fare beaters. To add extra security and encourage cops to use public transportation, New York City allows NYPD officers to ride free on subways and city buses. These days NYPD cops are given Metro pass cards they swipe through the machine, but in years past guys would quickly flash some shiny silver thing at a bus driver or token booth operator and try to skate by. If the driver or operator was paying attention, he’d call a cop, but if not, it was a free ride.
Usually police impersonators are loners, guys who act out their cop fantasies on their own. But sometimes they’re members of shadowy “police” organizations that hand out badges and ID cards and whose members actually think they’re cops.
A case in point is the now-defunct Kings County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. (Kings County encompasses Brooklyn; this group should not be confused with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.) Incorporated under an archaic 1875 state law that allowed certain private groups to enforce child abuse laws, these SPCC guys—there were about fifty of them, many of them doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so on—had set up their own little police force, complete with uniforms, badges, cars that made them look like NYPD cops, and their own “headquarters” in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn; in fact, their equipment was actually newer and better than ours. Some of them even had gun permits. Although the group claimed to have conducted a number of child abuse “investigations,” it was actually more of a wannabe social club, with the top guy calling himself the “commissioner” and most of the members holding the rank of “chief” or “deputy chief.” It might sound harmless, but the last thing anybody wanted was for guys with no police training whatsoever to interfere with ongoing child abuse investigations, or to draw a gun on somebody and shout: Freeze! SPCC Police! We raided the SPCC headquarters with a warrant in 2005 and later arrested nine members—including a Manhattan doctor and an attorney—who had actively passed themselves off as NYPD officers. The New York State Attorney General’s Office finally shut them down in 2006.
Sometimes police “impersonators” are actually law enforcement officers who are just straying out of their lane. New York has an endless array of quasi–law enforcement agencies—the Department of Citywide Administrative Services Police, NYC Transit Authority Property Protection Officers, City Marshals and City Sheriff’s deputies who enforce evictions—and on and on. I once had a neighbor who told me that he was “on the job,” meaning he was a cop, and when I asked him where he worked he showed me a gold badge that identified him as a Poultry Inspector for the New York City Department of Agriculture and Markets. It was a beautiful badge, and a real one; the guy was a bona fide chicken policeman, although he wasn’t allowed to carry a gun. In most cases the people who
work for these agencies only have authority within their own fields of enforcement. Officially, they are “peace officers,” not “police officers”—although occasionally they forget that.
For example, at one point we start getting complaints at the IAB Command Center about “cops” who are working off-duty as repossession men for a large furniture rental chain. When someone falls behind on the payments, these cops are showing up at their homes, flashing their shields, identifying themselves as police officers and threatening to arrest them if they don’t either pay up or turn over the rented furniture. This is a serious matter for us, because with a very few exceptions, NYPD cops are not allowed to moonlight as security officers—or as repo men. And they certainly aren’t allowed to flash their shields and tell people they’ll wind up in jail if they don’t give up the La-Z-Boy. So when we look into it, it turns out that the repo “cops” are New York City Department of Correction officers who are getting more than a little overzealous. We turn that one over to the DOC’s internal affairs unit.
So far the police impersonators I’ve talked about have been the relatively low-threat types—wannabes, traffic stop badge flashers, fare beaters, and so on. And most of those cases—there are hundreds of them every year in New York—are handled by regular patrol cops or precinct detective squads.
But there are other, more sinister police impersonators who pose a real danger. Those cases come to IAB—specifically, Group 51, the IAB Police Impersonation Group, which was and is the only police department investigative unit in the country tasked exclusively with investigating serious police impersonation crimes.
Group 51 began with the creation of the new IAB back in 1994. At the time the Department was having a big problem with bogus cops who were hitting bodegas, travel agencies, or other small businesses, primarily in immigrant communities. They’d flash police badges, identify themselves as cops, steal the money from the cash register or the cigar box under the counter, and then warn the victims not to report it. It was an effective MO for the robbers. Most of the victims came from countries where corrupt cops were the rule, not the exception—and where they came from, to report to the police a crime committed by other police would usually result in a beating, or worse.
The problem was that the robberies were “pattern crimes,” crimes committed by the same individuals or crews across precincts and even borough boundaries, and there was no centralized detective squad assigned to track dangerous police impersonators citywide. Also, sometimes it was unclear at first if the robbers were real crooked cops or ordinary crooks posing as crooked cops.
The result was that from 1994 on, IAB was tasked to handle all serious crimes committed by people who appeared to be or claimed to be cops—whether they turned out to be real cops or not. Which only made sense. If they were real crooked cops they’d come under IAB’s purview, and if it turned out they weren’t real cops, it didn’t make sense for an ongoing investigation to be turned over to regular detectives. Within IAB, any case that involved crooks who were clearly police impersonators would go straight to Group 51.
(Group 51 was easily the most coveted assignment among investigators drafted into the IAB for a couple reasons. One is that cops generally despise criminal police impersonators; they’re like a personal affront, and they make real cops look bad. And the other reason is that, given the choice, cops would much rather arrest cop impersonators than arrest real cops.)
Although small in number—only about a dozen investigators are permanently assigned to Group 51—every year Group 51 arrests about a hundred police impersonators who are involved in serious crimes. On the lower end of the serious scale are guys like Angel Gonzalez, who use people’s trust in police officers to scam them out of their money but at least don’t put them in fear for their lives. At the higher end of the serious scale are the guys who use badges to rob and rape people.
Rapes by police impersonators are a particularly widespread problem, not only in New York City but across the country. Rapists are by nature cowards who depend on intimidation to control their victims—and sometimes a badge, even a phony one, can be even more intimidating than a knife or a gun.
There are countless examples. Like this: A thirty-five-year-old man bangs on a woman’s apartment door in Queens, flashes a Department of Sanitation badge in front of the peephole, says, Police! Open up! and when she does he beats and rapes her. He’s tackled by neighbors as he tries to flee. Or this: A fifty-year-old child predator recently released from prison approaches a fifteen-year-old boy on a subway platform in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, flashes a fake badge, and “arrests” the kid for littering. He loads him into a van, drives to a remote area, and then sexually assaults him. Or this: A forty-year-old Staten Island man is standing in front of a subway station in Harlem wearing a full NYPD uniform and shield. (That’s actually pretty unusual; most impersonators pass themselves off as plainclothes cops with their “badges” on their belts or around their necks.) When a young immigrant woman asks this uniformed cop for subway directions, he orders her to go with him to the roof of a sixteen-story apartment building—she obeys, because after all, he’s a policeman—then he threatens to throw her off the roof if she doesn’t take off her clothes and do what he wants. She screams and fights her way free.
In none of those cases was the perp a real NYPD cop, or any other kind of cop. And yet in each case the victim acquiesced, at least at first, because they were intimidated by a badge.
Like I said, cases like that are all too common. But more common are police impersonators who prey on prostitutes.
The guy in East New York is a good example. This guy is driving around the known prostitution strips, picking up hookers, and when they get in his car he tells them he’s a cop and then calls in the “arrest” over a police-style radio. Then he drives them to a dark alley or parking lot, handcuffs them, and tells them he wants sex with a “police discount”—in other words, free—and if they don’t comply they’re going to jail. In at least one case, when the victim resists he beats her up.
Yes, they’re prostitutes, but it’s still forcible rape. The problem is that in most cases like this the prostitute won’t report it, either because she thinks the rapist is a real cop who could cause her trouble, or because she figures the real cops won’t do anything about it. And it’s true that we have had some cases in which real NYPD cops forced prostitutes to give them free sex.
With the East New York case, though, we catch a break. While those rapes are going on, we’re investigating a real NYPD vice cop who’s suspected of setting himself up as a pimp for some of the hookers in the same area. (He was later kicked off the force.) While we’re debriefing some of the hookers for that case, one of them mentions the cop who threatened her for free sex. Several other hookers tell us the same thing. But when we hear what this guy said and did, he doesn’t sound like a real cop to us. And it helps that in addition to being a rapist, this “cop” is also a moron. After forcing one of the hookers to give him sex, this guy tells her he wants to be her pimp, and he actually enters his cell phone number into her cell phone and later sends her several texts—which makes it pretty easy for us to track him down and arrest him. Turns out he’s a Con Edison power company employee from New Jersey, and he has never been a cop. He gets ten years.
Like the Con Ed guy, in most cases serious criminal police impersonators target victims who are least likely to report the crime: undocumented immigrants, runaway street kids, prostitutes—in other words, people who generally want nothing to do with the police, even after they’ve been victimized. So it’s not surprising that drug dealers are also a frequent target of phony cops.
Usually it’s a case of two or three guys stopping a courier on the street or banging a door in an apartment complex, then flashing badges and taking off with the money or drugs. But some of the rip-off crews are more sophisticated.
For example, in one joint NYPD/FBI operation, sixteen members of the Latin Kings gang who were doing police impersonation drug ri
p-offs were caught with police tactical vests, handcuffs, police scanners, bolt cutters, a hydraulic battering ram for knocking down doors, and a Crown Vic with emergency lights and a special button that let the driver activate a retractable piece of steel to cover its rear plate.
Another police impersonation crew took a different tack. They used the same kind of equipment—Crown Vics, badges, scanners, and so on—but instead of hitting drug or money shipments, they would track major drug dealers, stop their cars or invade their apartments, and then beat and torture them or their family members until the dealers paid a ransom or revealed where they hid their drug and money stashes. In some cases, the crew would threaten a dealer’s testicles with a pair of pliers. Prosecutors estimated the police impersonation gang hit more than a hundred drug dealers in New York City and other East Coast states, for a total take of about $4 million.
The victims of police impersonation drug rip-offs usually don’t resist. Sometimes it’s because they’re in on the rip—like Che Che in the Dennis Sindone case—but usually it’s because they figure there’s no percentage in getting into a gunfight with guys who appear to be cops. And a drug dealer whose money or drugs get stolen almost never reports the crime, either, because whether the rip-off crew is composed of real cops or phony ones, either way the result is the same: The drug dealer isn’t going to get his stolen money or drugs back. (I say they almost never report it because, as we’ll see in a later chapter, there was at least one case where a dealer whose drug shipment got ripped off by some apparently corrupt cops actually called IAB to complain.)
In fact, for drug dealers it’s actually better if the guys who rip them off are cops, or at least plausibly pretend to be, as opposed to members of a rival drug gang. For example, if members of the Trinitarios gang are getting ripped off by members of the rival gang DDP (Dominicans Don’t Play), to maintain their reputations and street credibility they have to do something about it—which is to say, they have to kill the guys who ripped them off, or somebody close to them, which draws heat, invites retaliation, and is generally bad for business. But if they can say they’ve been ripped off by cops, well, that’s just an occupational hazard. They’re not going to kill any cops, even corrupt ones, because that would be really bad for business.
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