The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (7 page)

Worse yet, there was a long history of tension between citizens of Bed-Stuy and the precinct, to the point where even after the turn of the new century, plenty of people viewed the police as an occupying force with no ties to the community. Think the Romans in Britain, or
Fort Apache, the Bronx
, without Paul Newman. Likewise, the police had their own views on the neighborhood, as a sergeant said in an unguarded moment during a precinct roll call: “You’re not in midtown Manhattan where everyone is walking around smiling and being happy. You’re in Bed-Stuy, where everyone probably has a warrant.”

Schoolcraft, meanwhile, had no idea where he was. His very first 81st Precinct activity report from July 2003 indicated that he largely walked a foot post that month and wrote 30 parking tickets, made 18 radio runs, and did 8 patrols of public housing, known as vertical patrols. He took two complaints and did three stop and frisks.

He also wrote several “C” summonses, which are basically quality-of-life tickets, for infractions like loitering for gambling, disorderly conduct, and public drinking—the very heart of the now decade-old philosophy of making low-level arrests to deter bigger crimes. The practice had two major side effects: One, it created criminal records not only for criminals, but for people, many of them young black and Hispanic youth, who were just sitting on the stoop smoking a joint; and two, it also created a lot of dismissed arrests. Statistics show that something over half of C summonses were dismissed once they got to court, but arrestees had to show up, and that cost them work days and other inconveniences that built resentment
of the NYPD. A lot of those arrests were generated in connection with stop and frisks, in which cops would stop people on vague grounds and find a sprinkling of pot in their pockets. Schoolcraft went along with the program at this point, not cognizant of the larger implications. And there was a certain energy in the specificity of his entries from this time, which suggests he was motivated to do the job.

His lieutenant of the period, Martin Zuniga, wrote in an evaluation that October that he “performs well with normal supervision. His motivation is steadfast. He performs above expectation.”

Over the next six or so years, or the rest of his career, Schoolcraft would remain in the 81st Precinct, a fairly long period of time for any officer to stay in one command. He would make 71 arrests—17 for felonies, 42 for misdemeanors, and 12 for violations. Fifteen of those would be for resisting arrest. He would also earn two of the lesser NYPD medals—one for excellent policy duty and one for meritorious police duty. His personnel records listed his special skills as an “RMP operator,” or someone who could drive a police car. It was a fairly light record, but one that was pretty common in the NYPD. He would also rack up his share of civilian complaints, nine in all, with several unnecessary force allegations. None of them would affect his career in any serious way.

As the year progressed, Schoolcraft listened to his father talk about Suzanne’s health. She was ailing from cancer and getting sicker. Adrian took leave from August 28 to October 12 of 2003 to help Larry care for her in Johnstown, which meant repeatedly driving her to Albany and Schenectady for doctors’ appointments. There was a point when the department began to resist his requests for time off. On one occasion, Schoolcraft wanted to take a few days to visit his mother, but his commanders refused and ordered him placed on forced overtime—an unofficial practice in which cops were basically required to work extra hours to fill in personnel holes.

“Adrian never forgave the NYPD for that,” Larry said.

Forced overtime was a major issue for the line officers, but it was also a big incentive to work more. Rather than increasing the size of the police department, Kelly was essentially ordering a force that was 5,000 cops smaller than in the past to cover for the fact that the mayor didn’t want to hire more police. Police officers became addicted to the extra overtime money but were
constantly exhausted from having to work one or two extra shifts a week, often on special details outside the precinct. It was common to see cops from the “outer borough” precincts standing a post in Times Square or in Wall Street or walking some parade route.

At the end of October 2003, Schoolcraft received his second job rating. Sergeant Martin Zuniga rated him as competent: “This officer is well versed on precinct conditions. He works well with little or no supervision.”

That December, he received another solid evaluation, which was particularly laudatory about an injury he suffered making an arrest on his own initiative: “He is motivated and maintains a high professional image. He performs above expectation.”

The December reviewer was Lieutenant Timothy Caughey, who would become an antagonist five year later, but for now seemed to be in his corner.

On December 22, 2003, his mother Suzanne suffered a massive stroke while she was receiving dialysis treatment. She was rushed to St. Mary’s Hospital and then to Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. Larry joined her there and called the 81st Precinct looking for Adrian. When his bosses finally located him, they planned to fly him to the hospital by helicopter, but there was too much fog. So they drove him, with lights and sirens, to Penn Station, where he took Amtrak and arrived in Albany at about midnight.

Suzanne survived for eight days, father and son held Christmas by her bedside, and then she died on December 30, 2003. She was 47 years old. For Adrian, his mother’s death was devastating. She had been very important to him. He thought of her every time he put on his uniform and went to work. He took the first 19 days of January 2004 off of work. But he had to get back to the job.

At that point in his career, he was still enjoying the good graces of his bosses. He was the model CompStat officer, getting the numbers the bosses cared about. An activity report from June 2004 offered a glimpse of what Schoolcraft was doing on the job. In that month, he arrested a drunk driver, made a drug possession bust, and caught two people with active warrants. He wrote 14 C summonses and stopped 6 people. He did 26 radio runs and 16 vertical patrols in public housing.

He was improving, his boss wrote: “If he stays focused he will evolve into a well rounded, very active officer.”

The boss added, “On occasion, he needs to be reminded to demonstrate courtesy when dealing with frustrated civilians, however, his overall demeanor is very respectful.”

Perhaps in some way related to his mother’s death, Schoolcraft racked up the most civilian complaints of his career: five in all, but he was found not guilty or the allegation was proved unsubstantiated in all of them. The cloak of protection was still around him.

But in November 2004, he was placed in what was known as “Level 1 force monitoring” for “negative performance/behavior” until November 2005. This designation had two significant elements: One, it meant that Schoolcraft would receive more attention from bosses about his work, and two, it also was a way for his bosses to control him. Like the Marine Corps drill instructors at Lejeune, the NYPD found ways to control its officers and insist on their “activity.”

But it was all smoke and mirrors. Nothing really came of it, and that outcome would stand in contrast to what happened in 2009. At the end of 2004, his patrol sergeant, Michael Miller, gave him a rating of 3.5—or more than competent—saying he was “resourceful, never complacent, a well rounded officer capable of fulfilling any task given to him. He is an asset to the department.”

This trend continued into 2005. Schoolcraft’s March 2005 monthly evaluation written by Lieutenant De La Fuente read, “He is highly motivated and a hard worker. He maximizes the limited patrol duty he has.”

In September 2005, he requested and received a two-month leave to care for his father, who was still depressed and seeing a psychologist after the death of Suzanne, and to winterize the Johnstown home. Adrian returned to duty in mid-November.

Adrian’s personnel record for the year contained one other entry: that someone filed a complaint that he refused to take a crime report. This was ironic given what would take place years later.

At the end of 2005, his sergeant, William Meyer, once again gave Schoolcraft a 3.5 rating. He was again above standards, and he got a rare 5 for “police ethics/integrity.”

“P.O. Schoolcraft’s deportment and performance always reflects a high level of integrity,” Meyer wrote. “He has proven himself to be a fine officer with great potential.”

Meyer’s lieutenant, Leighton Myrie, concurred. “P.O. Schoolcraft is a competent member of the 81st Precinct. His disposition is consistently courteous and we expect great things from P.O. Schoolcraft in the future.”

By the end of 2005, crime in the 81st Precinct had dropped by 3.5 percent. Commissioner Kelly had sent Impact cops to the area for six months to patrol what was known as the Fulton-Nostrand Avenue business district and then ordered another six-month stint. Community activists started a campaign to change the neighborhood’s unofficial motto from “Bed-Stuy Do or Die” to “Bed-Stuy and Proud Of It.” The effort failed because the original slogan was so intertwined with the lore of the area.

In April 2006, Schoolcraft made his first formal foray into raising issues in the command, when he wrote a memo to Deputy Inspector Robert Brower about forced overtime. “This 49 is to notify you of a serious problem within the precinct, that I feel has now become a chronic safety issue. The problem that I’m reporting to you is forced overtime. Police officers are being forced to work double shifts and/or give up their regular days off, always at the last moment.

“Forced overtime is issued by department civilians who don’t seem to be concerned about the safety of police officers and the public they serve. I’m also concerned that we could be violating department policy and/or state law by working so many days without a day off. I feel that this policy is leading to an increase in civilian complaints, sick days, accidents and injuries.”

How the commander reacted to this memo is unclear from the record, but nothing changed. Schoolcraft was tilting at windmills.

Crime dropped in the precinct by 1.9 percent in 2006, and Schoolcraft’s bosses gave him a rating of 3.5 on his performance evaluation again. The only black mark in his personnel record was that someone filed a complaint disputing a ticket that he wrote.

His father was impressed. “He was successful in the NYPD because he could deal in these weird, oppressive environments,” Larry Schoolcraft said.

Though Schoolcraft was enjoying the good graces of his bosses for the moment, performance evaluations are strange documents. The reality was that much of a police officer’s job involved interacting with citizens. Those interactions were difficult to quantify. How, for example, do you put a number to the fact that a cop picked up a child who had fallen off his bike, or helped an old lady cross the street, or diffused a brewing street fight
with only words? How do you quantify an officer who resolved a situation by specifically not making an arrest? How do you quantify a decision
not
to take action?

On the other hand, it was fairly easy to quantify arrests, summonses, stop and frisks, sick days, and other indicators. The result was that a police officer’s ability to generate numbers became more important than his or her ability to make good decisions. Performance evaluations are written to appear objective, based on statistics and hard facts, but, as Schoolcraft would learn, officers were actually extremely vulnerable to subjective views.

Another thing he noticed was the second-guessing that was taking place. If a patrol officer took a complaint, invariably there was a sergeant or lieutenant who would appear at the scene to essentially look over the shoulder of the cop. That boss would second-guess on the type of crime, on the circumstances of the crime, on how the incident should be classified. The patrol officer would be obligated to adhere to whatever he or she was told. Twenty years ago, patrol officers didn’t have to deal with that kind of thing. They took a complaint and filed it and then moved on. Now, they were being forced to question what they had written. The reason was CompStat and the downward pressure on the numbers. Crime had dropped to a point where in order to come up with continued declines, commanders had to become very good at parsing complaints to look for opportunities to downgrade incidents or wipe them off the books entirely. In addition, the commander and supervisory bosses were calling crime victims and questioning them on details of their accounts of a crime for the purpose of reclassifying or downgrading a report to a lesser charge.

And then there was training. Roll calls, most days, were supposed to include an element of training, but often the “training” would mean just one sentence and then an order to “sign the training log.” The officers were ordered to sign the training log as a hedge against lawsuits. If a cop shot someone or beat the shit out of someone “outside of guidelines,” the NYPD could look at the training log and say, well, we trained the guy. But it was a fake log. Schoolcraft immediately recognized what was happening, and for the period, went along with it, but he was questioning it.

He did not really understand or appreciate the focus on numbers. He had not read about the Broken Windows theory first described by Kelling and Wilson, but he was being asked to embrace their model.

As he worked his tours in the 8-1, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, or PBA, was challenging the department’s obsession with numbers in a case that showed striking parallels with what Schoolcraft would later experience. The case involved an officer named David Velez, who appealed his 2005 evaluation from the 75th Precinct, which he alleged was based on his failure to meet the summons quota.

In the lawsuit, Velez claimed that the commander of the 75th Precinct, Michael Marino, issued a quota of 10 summonses a month. If officers did not hit the quota, they would receive lower evaluations. Marino put this demand in a memo to his supervisors, who then passed it on to the cops in another memo written by an amusingly named sergeant called Lurch: “Failure to write the required amount of summonses and failure to make the required number of arrests will result in substandard performance ratings.”