Sometimes the press simply didn’t understand how law enforcement works. For example, remember those cops that robbed the perfume warehouse in New Jersey? The one where they got away with half a million dollars’ worth of swag but left behind a truck rented by one of them in his own name? As I explained earlier, after the robbery the local cops alerted the FBI, who alerted us, and we quickly rolled up the cop robbery crew—and since it was an interstate theft case the feds prosecuted the cops involved. But some reporters took that case and other joint IAB-FBI investigations to mean that IAB was being caught flat-footed, that the FBI was the lead agency in rooting out corruption in the NYPD, and that the NYPD wasn’t capable of policing itself. And I had to think, Do these guys not understand that that warehouse robbery took place in New Jersey? Do they not realize that New Jersey is another state? Are they unfamiliar with the Hudson River?
Or how about that story on the IAB Command Center logs, the one that said IAB had received fifty thousand “complaints” or “tips” about police misconduct or corruption or brutality in a year, but only opened investigations into about a thousand of them—which therefore proved that IAB wasn’t taking corruption and misconduct seriously, that we were ignoring thousands of tips and complaints. I actually sat down with the reporter involved and patiently—or as patiently as I could, given the Sicilian thing—tried to explain the difference between a “log” and a “tip.” I tried to get him to understand that, for example, when the aforementioned Barry from Brooklyn calls IAB forty times to report that forty different cops have stabbed him in the eye on forty different occasions, it will generate forty logs in IAB records—but that doesn’t quite amount to forty bona fide “tips” or “complaints” about police brutality. But the guy just couldn’t seem to get it.
Well, I could go on and on. There were a lot of times when I wanted to publicly correct the press’s misinformation about specific IAB cases—not for my sake, but for the good name of the IAB—but I couldn’t. For one thing, we didn’t talk about ongoing investigations or unadjudicated criminal cases. In that sense we were sort of like the CIA: We can neither confirm nor deny . . . In fact, everyone in IAB, me included, was required to sign a special nondisclosure agreement. So we were seldom able to get the real facts out.
And besides, as Paul Browne, the deputy commissioner for public information under Kelly, often explained to me, if you respond to bad reporting in the press you just turn a one-day story into a two- or three-day story—and in the end you lose anyway. He was right, of course. But it still rankled.
Lawyers were another political headache. Any high-ranking public official can expect to be sued for supposedly permitting improper actions by his or her subordinates, even if he or she wasn’t directly involved in the alleged misconduct; it comes with the territory. So as IAB chief I was a named defendant—along with the police commissioner, the New York City Police Department, and the City of New York—in about a dozen lawsuits alleging various acts of misfeasance and demanding millions of dollars in damages. The press picked up on a lot of them, reprinting the lawyers’ allegations almost verbatim—and since the city’s lawyers wouldn’t allow the Department to publicly respond with anything beyond a generic denial of any wrongdoing, some people assumed they were true.
For example, there was a Brooklyn cop we investigated for allegedly trying to set himself up as a pimp, and who was later fired from the Department. He sued us for $30 million, claiming among other things that, one, IAB intentionally targeted minority cops in its investigations (which case statistics indicated wasn’t true), and two, at least as I understood the complaint, the IAB female undercover we had posing as a hooker in the case—code name “Candy”—was so good-looking that in effect she constituted a form of entrapment.
In another lawsuit, an IAB investigator claimed that I was among those who had fostered a campaign of harassment and discrimination against him because he was gay—this about a guy who as CO in the Sixth Precinct carried a candle in the AIDS vigil and who often received praise from the NYPD Gay Officers Action League. (Actually, when I first heard about the IAB investigator’s lawsuit, my initial reaction was, What? He’s gay?) I’m not saying that gay and lesbian officers have never experienced discrimination or offensive comments in the ranks of the NYPD, but I certainly would never have knowingly allowed it to happen.
In yet another discrimination lawsuit, a recently retired female IAB detective claimed that I was among those who not only discriminated against minorities in hiring and promotions—which, again, we demonstrated by the numbers was untrue—but that female IAB employees were routinely coerced to have sex in return for career advancement, which sort of put a whole new spin on the “Affairs” part of “Internal Affairs.” In my opinion, even by the low standards of lawsuits that was ridiculous. In fact, while the female complainant criticized my management style, she also later told a reporter, quote: He [Campisi] is honorable. He still has the old values. He loves his wife and children and he lives for his grandchildren. He is not like a normal chief. He never made a pass at me.
I don’t know how that quote played with the “normal chiefs,” whoever they were. But it played pretty well in my house.
In the end, we won almost every lawsuit filed against me and IAB (one is still pending)—won in the sense that neither I nor the IAB nor the Department was found to have done anything wrong. Most of the cases were dropped or dismissed outright, but in some cases the City Corporation Counsel, the city’s legal arm, paid the complainant—and of course his or her lawyer—a relatively small sum to make the lawsuit go away. For example, in the case of the former Brooklyn cop suspected of being a pimp, he had demanded $30 million in damages but wound up settling for somewhat less than that in “go-away money”—$2,500 to be exact.
“Go-away money” in unfounded or frivolous lawsuits against cops is a sore point with me and with most cops. I can understand the city paying a settlement in cases where the cops committed a crime, like the Louima case, or cases where the cops made a mistake, like the Diallo shooting. I can also understand the arithmetic involved in settling a frivolous lawsuit with a small go-away payment. The way the city’s lawyers see it, why spend $100,000 in litigation costs to win a bogus lawsuit when you can make it disappear for five or ten or twenty grand?
The problem is that while the go-away settlements always include a stipulation that the city and the cops involved are not admitting that they did anything wrong, who believes that? Most people figure, why would the city pay if the cops are innocent, so they must be guilty, right? If it were up to me—which it isn’t—I’d have the city’s lawyers fight every unfounded lawsuit against a cop and not pay out a dime. It might cost some money initially, but in the long run it also might discourage lawsuits that are made up out of thin air.
The police unions were often another source of political headaches. As I said earlier, the unions have a valid role to play, but in cases like Louima and the Bronx ticket-fixing investigation, their leadership sometimes went too far. Protecting your members’ rights is one thing, impeding a legitimate IAB investigation is another thing altogether. The case of the “Drunken Hero Cop” is an example—and it’s also that one case I mentioned in which political pressure directly affected an IAB investigation.
Here’s the scene: It’s the wee early hours on a summer night in the St. Albans section of Queens, and an off-duty, fifteen-year veteran NYPD detective from Brooklyn South Narcotics and some civilian friends are having drinks in an unlicensed social club. As they’re leaving the club they see four men on the sidewalk doing a major beat-down on another guy. When the off-duty detective identifies himself as a cop and tries to stop the beating, one of the beat-down guys pulls out a handgun and starts firing. The detective pulls out his own off-duty gun and fires four times, hitting the shooter in the left arm and leg—although at the time the detective doesn’t know if he hit him or not. After that the shooter and his pals manage to take off in a car. No one else is injured.
What follows is all SOP. An NYPD duty officer arrives at the scene and takes the detective’s gun; the ballistics guys will need it for bullet comparisons. Since it’s an officer-involved shooting with possible injuries, the duty officer notifies IAB and our call-out team goes to the scene to assist the borough shooting team in figuring out what happened. Meanwhile, an IAB deputy chief goes to Jamaica Hospital, where the detective has been taken for observation—a standard procedure in an officer-involved shooting even if the officer isn’t visibly injured. And that’s where the problems start.
Remember the Sean Bell case in 2006, when cops shot and killed the unarmed Bell outside a strip club in Queens? In that case there was some suspicion that the undercover cop had had more than just a couple of drinks in the strip club, which could have affected his judgment and led to the shooting. So after that the NYPD implemented a new policy: In any officer-involved shooting within New York City, on-duty or off, that involves a death or possible injury, the officer involved is given a Breathalyzer blood-alcohol test—and if he comes up drunk, he’s suspended pending completion of the shooting investigation. All of the police unions complained about the new rule on the grounds that it was demeaning to cops, that it made cops be treated like suspects. But that’s the rule: You fire your gun, and if someone is killed or injured or may be injured, you take the Breathalyzer test.
Which is what happens with the detective. At the hospital the IAB deputy chief gives him the test with a portable, handheld Breathalyzer—and the detective blows a .09, just over the .08 blood-alcohol content limit for being legally intoxicated. This isn’t good—technically, NYPD cops are never supposed to be drunk and unfit for duty, even when they’re off-duty, and they’re certainly never supposed to be drunk when they fire their weapon. On the other hand, blowing an oh-nine doesn’t necessarily make it a bad shooting, especially if it’s in self-defense. So at this point, this detective, who’s a good cop with a good record, probably isn’t in serious trouble.
Or at least he’s not until some reps from the Detectives Endowment Association (DEA) show up at the hospital. Following SOP in a case like this, the IAB deputy chief orders the detective to report to one of the NYPD’s Intoxicated Driver Testing Units for a more accurate Intoxilyzer test—which actually is probably going to help the detective, since by that time a couple hours will have passed and maybe his BAC (blood-alcohol content) will have dropped below .08. But the guys from the DEA, which, along with the other police unions, has been looking for a chance to challenge the new Breathalyzer test rule for officer-involved shootings, tell the detective to refuse the order, that it’s a violation of their contract. There’s a lot of loud discussion and waving of arms, and finally I drive in to the hospital from home, this at about four a.m., to get this straightened out.
Remember, at this point we still don’t have all the facts. IAB investigators and the borough shooting team haven’t yet interviewed all the witnesses, most of whom scattered when the shooting started. The ballistics guys haven’t finished processing the scene to figure out whose shots went where. And we don’t even know yet if any of the detective’s shots hit anybody; only later is the suspect picked up at a Long Island hospital where he went to be treated for gunshot wounds. All I’ve got is a detective who’s legally drunk, who was in an unlicensed social club—itself a violation of Department rules—and who through his union reps won’t follow standard Department procedure for an officer-involved shooting.
So I do the only thing I can do. I take the detective’s shield and temporarily suspend him from the Department. All by the book.
Well, judging from the reaction, you would have thought that I had slapped a pair of handcuffs on Mother Teresa. The detective’s union takes the story to the press, which takes the position that the detective should be given a medal, not a suspension. “NYPD SUSPENDS HERO COP!” is the general theme, with me specifically as the bad guy. Pretty soon it’s a full-blown controversy, with front-page editorials in the tabloids, the rank and file up in arms, and the police union presidents threatening to tell their members not to make any arrests or intervene in life-threatening situations when they’re off-duty. Finally Mayor Bloomberg, who hates getting into public beefs with the cops, sends the word down to Commissioner Kelly: Restore the detective to duty—which Kelly does.
This was all very public, nothing underhanded about it; it wasn’t like the old days of the IAD, when word would secretly come down from above and an Internal Affairs investigation would be quietly dropped into the “tickler file,” never to be seen again. The NYPD press office even issued a press release explaining the decision.
So I guess in the scheme of things it was a relatively minor incident. And as I said, it was also the only time that a mayor or a commissioner directly intervened in an ongoing IAB case while I was IAB chief. But it shows you how much political power the police unions can muster, even when they’re wrong.
Another source of political headaches for me and for IAB had nothing to do with police corruption or serious misconduct or any of the other things that Internal Affairs usually is concerned with. No, believe it or not, our most frequent and frustrating political battles were about . . .
Parking.
That’s right, parking. I know, I know, in a city and a police department that should be dealing with serious issues—crime, antiterrorism, police corruption, misconduct, and all the rest—we’re talking about parking? It does sound foolish, but you have to understand that while parking, or the lack of it, is a major issue in most urban areas, in New York City it’s an obsession. I mean, you steal a New Yorker’s wallet, or his watch, or maybe even his wife, there’s a chance he’ll let it slide. But if you mess with a New Yorker’s parking privileges, you’ve got a war on your hands.
And unfortunately, during my watch as chief, IAB got dragged kicking and screaming into the parking wars—with disastrous results.
A little background here: As I said, all of the police commissioners I worked under had confidence in IAB, but Commissioner Ray Kelly most of all. So whenever something special comes up that Kelly wants taken care of, he calls us in, even if it really doesn’t relate to Internal Affairs. Is there a problem with the awarding of tow-truck drivers’ contracts? Put IAB on it. Is there a committee charged with drawing up new rules and policies for NYPD undercover cops? Put IAB on it. Does he want to make sure that a Department equipment procurement process goes smoothly? Kelly puts IAB on it. And so on.
This sort of “mission creep” takes up a lot of IAB’s time—mine included—and even though we usually get additional resources to do the job, it’s still takes away from IAB’s primary mission. So whenever we got drawn into one of these sideshows, I’d tell my guys who had to work on it: Hey, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that the commissioner has faith in us. The bad news is that the commissioner has faith in us.
Which brings us back to the parking debacle.
For years now—this is around 2007—the City Council has been complaining about cars with “Official Police Business” parking placards taking up too many street parking spots, especially around City Hall and the various borough courthouses and government centers. There are thousands and thousands of these parking placards out there, and not just for NYPD vehicles; judges, district attorneys, federal agencies, and other state and city government departments also get the placards for their vehicles, which effectively protects them against getting ticketed or towed. And they’re being illegally parked everywhere, not just at expired meters but in bus stops, handicapped spaces, no stopping/standing zones, crosswalks, at fire hydrants, you name it. It’s a safety issue—and although the City Council members don’t say so, it also makes it harder for City Council members and their staff members to use their “Official Police Business” placards to park illegally.
So every time Commissioner Kelly has to appear before some City Council committee, what do they want to talk about? Crime? Police salaries? Department staffing levels? Forget about it
. It’s parking. What are you going to do about the parking? They’re constantly breaking his shoes about it.
And when Kelly looks into it, he finds that the NYPD’s system for issuing the placards is a mess. They don’t even know for certain how many placards are out there, or who has them, and if they really need them. Kelly wants the whole parking placard system reorganized. So whom does he assign to do it?
Like I said, the good news is that the commissioner has faith in IAB. The bad news is that the commissioner has faith in IAB.
Okay, fine. This isn’t a proper IAB function, but we’ll do it. So we cut the number of parking placards issued in half—boy, you should have heard the bureaucrats howl about that—and we make it clear to all placard holders that an “Official Business” parking placard is for bona fide official business only, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can park your vehicle in a crosswalk or a bus stop. But do they listen? No. They’re still hogging every legal and illegal parking spot around City Hall, and the City Council is still breaking Kelly’s shoes.
So Kelly decides to get tough. The NYPD is going to start ticketing and towing these illegally parked government vehicles, placards notwithstanding. And when I hear this, I’m thinking: Please, God, no. Not us. Not IAB.
But yes, it’s us. As much as I fight it—I knew this was going to be a disaster—Kelly orders IAB to start ticketing and towing illegally parked government vehicles, police vehicles included.
So I assign an IAB lieutenant to oversee it, and he calls in some guys from the various Patrol Borough Investigations Units with some tow trucks, and they start towing illegally parked official vehicles. Now some precinct detective or assistant district attorney or Agriculture Department meat inspector will come walking out of one of the courthouses or City Hall or the federal building, and when he starts looking for his car in front of the fire hydrant where he left it, it’s not there anymore—which means that before he can get it out of the impound yard, he, or worse, his boss, is going to have to write a letter explaining what dire official business emergency forced him to park it there in the first place. He won’t have to pay the towing and storage fees, but unless he’s got a really good excuse, he or his department is going to have to pay the ticket.
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