The hammer begins to fall on the officers who idiotically took offense and arrested a guy who had the nerve to criticize their reckless driving. Murray Weiss in DNAinfo:
The NYPD lieutenant involved in the questionable arrest of a Brooklyn mailman was stripped of his gun and badge Thursday and placed on desk duty.
…
The four are set to be harshly disciplined…. Machado, a former Marine who saw combat in Iraq, will take the heaviest hit because “the supervisor is the one who should dictate the situation,” a well-placed source explained.
“He is the boss and he is [the] one who controls what occurs,” the source said, predicting Machado, an 11-year veteran, could lose as much as a year’s vacation, but not his job, which was something even the mailman, Glenn Grays, said he did not want to occur.
You’d think, if the cops were in a legitimate rush rather than just driving like fools, they would have continued on to the emergency rather than having the time to stop and harass a mailman. I stand by my previous statement that this was “inexcusably shitty” police behavior.
Pertinent to our discussion about uniforms in your prior thread about this clash, Commiss. Bratton claims that these cops' failure to be in uniform was "in direct violation of our patrol guide". I'll be damned.
I take it that they weren't using their siren or Mars.
That precinct has been a mess. And not just for this. Let's do our best to forget but still remember Captain Forster.
And the bicycle ticket blitz being given to bikes? That was the 71, too.
But these guys were anti-crime, which is a plain-clothes unit. So I don't get Bratton's comment on that.
But there are too many plainclothes units: Crime, Conditions, SNEU, and the boro gang unit sometimes makes a cameo. Are they really that different? There's a lot of "prowling for numbers."
Speaking of which, how about the crime team in the 100 Precinct — or so I've heard — arresting the driver and passenger of a U-Haul van for being… a few hours past due time. That inexcusably shitty arrest came out as grand larceny auto.
I wonder how this would have gone without video, and I mean that I sincerely have a hard time predicting how it would have played out without (partial) video. I like to think that the investigation would be just as vigorous absent the video, but I am not sure. The video does leave open the possibility that the mailman did something bad to justify how they treated him — pretty unlikely, but at least technically possible.
I do doubt this would be a Cop In The Hoop post if there was no video. That is not a criticism, and maybe I am wrong about that anyway.
You've got 2 competing sovereigns, and a pretty strong postal union, involved, so I think this would play out the same sans video. Or at best, without video, the whole thing might have gone into the circular file.
That is one unintended consequence of video: No cop is going to let someone go once stopped, lest she be accused of favoritism.
JSM
Departmentally it is *extremely* unusual and eye-brow raising for a working uniformed post-office employee to be arrested for no crime (other than disorderly conduct). But I doubt I'd know about without video. (And I wouldn't post about it without some proof.)
Well, good for the video then. Again, not a criticism of Prof Moskos, or this blog. Your way of looking at this is quite reasonable (not that you need my validation, I hasten to add).