A "willful blindness" to corruption throughout the ranks of the New York City Police Department has allowed highly organized networks of rogue officers to deal in drugs and prey on black and Hispanic neighborhoods, according to the final report of the commission that investigated the department.
The report by the Mollen Commission on its two-year investigation into police corruption is particularly powerful in its criticisms of sergeants and other commanders of five precincts found to be riddled with corruption.
And it takes to task the police union -- the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association -- and the department's own internal investigation apparatus for effectively curtailing anti- corruption efforts.
"Scores of officers told us that they believed the department did not want them to report corruption, that such information was often ignored and that their careers would be ruined if they did so," the report said. "The evidence shows that this belief was not unfounded."
The report, which was circulating yesterday before its formal release today, reiterates the conclusion the panel reached in last December's interim findings: that most officers in the 31,000-member force are honest despite the existence of corruption. But the final report draws a detailed picture of well-organized groups of rogue officers racing to crime scenes to skim money from captured stashes of cash, union delegates tipping off corrupt officers to investigations, young cadets learning in the Police Academy that they are not to "rat" on their brother officers, and internal police investigators burying corruption evidence into "tickler files."
"The principle of command accountability, which holds commanders responsible for fighting corruption, completely collapsed," the report said. It held past police commissioners responsible for the breakdown, but it did not cite any of them by name. The commissioners during the period studied were Benjamin Ward, Lee P. Brown and Raymond W. Kelly.
However, an appendix to the report said that one of them, Mr. Ward, had refused to approve investigations out of fear that disclosures might damage the department.
The panel recommended the city establish an agency that it calls the Police Commission, independent of the department, with broad powers to investigate corruption and to insure officer accountability in corruption cases, as well as to monitor officer screening, recruitment and training.
In calling for the independent investigative panel -- whose members would be appointed by the Mayor -- the report cited a recurring 20-year cycle of corruption that it said proved that the department is incapable of policing itself.
The panel's recommendations are now in the hands of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and his Police Commissioner, William J. Bratton. Mr. Bratton said yesterday that he opposed creation of an outside monitor with sweeping investigative and policy powers. In the past, Mr. Giuliani had said he favors recreating the position of special prosecutor for police corruption, which existed until four years ago, but it remains uncertain how much of the panel's recommendations the Mayor would embrace.
The report said, however, that the department's current leadership had displayed "a determined commitment to fighting police corruption. "
The call for greater outside authority over the department comes from a panel that was originally appointed by Mayor David N. Dinkins after a city police officer, Michael Dowd, was arrested in Suffolk County on charges of drug dealing in 1992, touching off a wider inquiry. Now Mayor Giuliani must respond to what is effectively an inheritance from an administration that was widely viewed as unfriendly by police officers and their union that helped elect Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Giuliani had previously publicly praised the panel. But he had no comment yesterday on its findings, even though various copies of the document were circulating among reporters, and senior members of his Police Department had been consulted in the drafting of sections of the report.
A Disturbing Finding
Perhaps the most disturbing finding of the Mollen report, which is based on a study of internal police documents and corruption investigations that are still only partially known publicly, was the presence of well-organized police "crews" terrorizing minority neighborhoods.
These groups, sometimes reaching 12 or more officers in number, "are more akin to street gangs: small, loyal, flexible, fast-moving and often hard-hitting," the report said.
"They often use department equipment to force entry," the report said. "They manipulate fellow officers, their supervisors and the courts to their advantage. And they fuel each other's corruption through their eagerness to prove their loyalty and toughness to one another."
The panel found that a common thread knitting the corruption, brutality and all the irregularities was the absence of a strong command system in which senior department leaders hold middle-level supervisors responsible for lower-level corruption.
Mr. Brown, the former Commissioner who is now director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, declined to comment on the Mollen report because he had not yet seen a copy, said his spokeswoman, Pat Wheeler. And Mr. Ward said he could not comment because he had not seen it. Mr. Kelly was unavailable for comment.
The Mollen report cited precincts, mainly in poorer neighborhoods, where corruption was rife: in University Heights in the Bronx, Harlem and the East Village in Manhattan, and the Brownsville and East New York sections of Brooklyn. In those precincts, it said, "a number of supervisors knew or should have known about corruption within their commands and did nothing to stop it."
The report said that "willfully blind supervisors fear the consequences of a corruption scandal more than corruption itself."
Commissioner Bratton said he and Milton Mollen, a former deputy mayor who headed the commission, "were very much in sync" on their approach to fighting corruption, noting that he had dinner with Mr. Mollen Tuesday night to discuss the final report's findings. But he added that "we're agreeing to disagree" on the panel's call for an outside monitor with broad investigatory powers.
The report credited Mr. Bratton with making a serious effort at rooting out corruption, but it said officers throughout the department still view the Internal Affairs Bureau as lacking in credibility. "An officer willing to violate the code of silence to report corruption will hardly turn to investigators he believes to be incompetent, unsupportive, and even vindictive."
Time to 'Digest' Report
John Miller, Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Information, said this week that the administration would take a few weeks "to digest and analyze" the Mollen recommendations before announcing its own anti- corruption strategy.
The officers' union came under special criticism for encouraging a secretive "us versus them" atmosphere that the report said pervaded the force. It cited several cases in which P.B.A. officials tried to obstruct investigations, including one in which a union delegate not only tipped off two officers about a narcotics corruption allegation but also agreed to show them photographs of their accusers.
Joseph Mancini, a spokesman for the P.B.A., said the union would not comment on the report until officials have had time to read it.
'Collars for Dollars'
The commission also found that officers who were otherwise doing their jobs to fight crime falsified records often to obtain convictions. It noted that while street narcotics enforcement units are prohibited from entering buildings to make arrests, members of such squads typically falsified papers to make arrests that actually occurred indoors appear as though they were made on the street. And in a practice called "collars for dollars," officers sometimes took short cuts to make more arrests to earn more overtime and earn promotions to coveted assignments.
The commission found that the official tolerance of corruption, and brutality that often accompanied it, shredded the most basic integrity control: the support of law-abiding residents who see the officers who walk and drive their beats every day.
In high-crime, drug-infested neighborhoods, the panel found: "Numerous residents and leaders of these communities told us that they often do not know whom to suspect more: the cops or the criminals. Few civilians would ever turn to the department to report corruption -- because they believe the department will invariably support even corrupt cops more than the public."
As for improving accountability, the panel called for the establishment of a special Command Accountability Review Unit to identify supervisors and commanders who condone corrupt acts. In a break with current policy, it urged that "the department should factor superior corruption -control performance in promotion and assignment practices."
So far, the highest-ranking supervisors implicated in the corruption scandal surrounding the 30th Precinct in Harlem have been a handful of sergeants who have been transferred and two who face special inquiries. The majority of senior officers in the precinct at the time of the allegations of drug dealing and civil rights violations have continued to climb the departmental ladder.
For example, Inspector Richard F. Martin, who was the commander of the precinct in 1990, was promoted recently to head the city's highway police force.
