Tag: Adrian Schoolcraft

Adrian Schoolcraft wanted money and he got it, according to the Post.

Schoolcraft wasn’t the first to point out that the NYPD was under intense (and illegal) quota pressure. He’s just, as I wrote.

The only one, in my humble opinion, who has tried to martyr himself and turn number fudging into a tidy personal $50 million profit. He and his father have tried twice before to sue police departments for money. Maybe the third time is the charm.

It was.

Here’s what I’ve written about this, in chronological order.

May 6, 2010. The NYPD Tapes

May 19, 2010. School[craft] Readings

August 13, 2010. Like Father Like Son?

March 10, 2012. No New News

June 25, 2010. Schoolcraft Tapes

August 10, 2010. Schoolcraft sues NYPD for $50 Million

November 10, 2010. NYPD Quotas (and Schoolcraft)

October 16, 2015. “Adrian Schoolcraft is no Frank Serpico”

It’s yesterday’s news that Adrian Schoolcraft is suing New York and the NYPD for $50 million.

It turns out, amazingly, that this isn’t the first Schoolcraft vs. P.D. lawsuit. No, it’s not the first. It’s not even the second.

Turns out that Adrian’s father, Larry Schoolcraft, was also a police officer. In Fort Worth, Texas, I believe (though the Village Voice says Dallas). It seems that, like Adrian, after seven or eight years, Larry didn’t leave the police department on good terms, either.

Schoolcraft v. City of Fort Worth was filed in 1999. Whatever it was about, it must have been for pretty big bucks because the city first budgeted $145,000 and then another $65,000 (1,2,3) for its legal defense. In 2000, Schoolcraft’s petition for review was denied by the Texas Supreme Court. I guess Larry lost.

The Schoolcrafts have suffered a lot of loss.

Larry Schoolcraft moved to upstate New York. Adrian Schoolcraft joined the NYPD in 2002 and hit the streets in 2003. A few months later his grandfather, Larry’s father, died. Soon after that Larry’s wife, Suzanne, died, either in 2003 from cancer or in 2004 from a stroke.

A few years pass.

Then in 2007, police got a call for a drunk man at a convenience store. Officers respond and decided the man, Larry Schoolcraft, can’t drive. Being a small town, they drove him home. Two or three days later, power company employees saw Larry passed out on his porch. It was cold. They called 911. Subsequently Schoolcraft sued the police. The local paper, the Leader-Herald, reported:

The lawsuit filed April 15 claims Schoolcraft suffered permanent injuries because he was left outside in the cold.

Schoolcraft’s attorney, James. W. Bendall, said his client had to be hospitalized and required surgery. Some of Schoolcraft’s muscles were permanently damaged because of exposure, the suit claims.
…
Schoolcraft, who is in his 50s, was groggy because of some medication he had taken, his attorney said.
…
The lawsuit claims deputies simply brought Schoolcraft to his porch [and left him there]. … Deputies claim they brought Schoolcraft into his home.
…
Schoolcraft… had no memory of what occurred… [and] found out what had happened when his son, a New York City police officer, came upstate after receiving a call that his father was in the hospital.

Out for two or three days in freezing weather? That’s some medication.

No matter, after the 2007 incident, Larry went to live with his son Adrian in New York City. In February, 2008, Adrian’s maternal grandfather died. Two days later Adrian’s paternal grandmother dies, too.

A very rough month. It might even be enough to push me over the edge.

Two months after the death of his mother, Larry Schoolcraft filed his lawsuit against the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. Six days after the Leader-Herald wrote about the lawsuit, the paper ran another story, this one about how Larry’s home had been broken into eight months earlier, back around September, 2007, after Larry went to live with Adrian in NYC. Among the stolen goods, Larry Schoolcraft says, were the ashes of his wife and the couple’s infant son, who he says died shortly after being born in 1988.

If it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all. But at least they had each other for support. Through thick and thin, through all their misfortune, father and son, living together, probably spent a lot time talking, mourning, recovering, and perhaps the subject of police departments came up and just how unfair life can sometimes be.

On June 1, 2008, just six weeks after Larry files his last lawsuit against the police, Adrian starts secretly recording conversations that will become the basis for his first lawsuit against the police.

Maybe it’s all just coincidence. Who am I to say? But I’d love to know what Larry’s lawsuit in Fort Worth was about. I mean, wouldn’t it be something if Adrian’s lawsuit against his police department in New York just happened to be similar to his father’s lawsuit against his police department in Fort Worth a decade earlier? Wouldn’t that really be something?

(Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)

The more of these tapes I hear, the more I think how good these secretly recorded NYPD officers sound. And this is the best [read: worst] they could come up with? To me it shows what a good job most men and women in the NYPD do.

In the latest batch, particular kudos to Lt Rafael Mascol, who offers some pretty good suggestions as to how Officer Schoolcraft could get higher job evaluation rankings. He offers him other tours. And he says, “Go out there answer some more radio runs. Do some more summonses. Write more reports. Do more proactive work. If you’re have trouble seeing activity, we can put you with a more active officer who can see the activity and maybe point it out to you.”

It’s that last part I really love. And he’s not saying this sarcastically. He’s trying to help.

Even if Schoolcraft’s basic point may be correct (that crime is being downgraded), and despite an order to talk with his sergeant, he did leave an hour early saying he didn’t feel well. You can’t just walk away from work as a police office. It’s called going AWOL. If he did something violent or had a heart attack, the NYPD would have been held responsible.

Even Chief Marino sounds reasonable. Schoolcraft certainly sounds sane, but it’s understandable that he has to go to the hospital to get checked out. He was complaining of chest pains, for crying out loud!

He didn’t have to get EDP’d (or EP’d, as we say in Baltimore, or, in normal lingo, declared crazy and getting taken to the hospital). It sounds like he could have gone on his own free will as a medical patient. Instead, he said was going to lie there until he felt better. So he went as a mental patient.

The idea of throwing a guy in a mental ward because he’s got evidence against the brass sounds great, but it’s not what you hear on the tapes. Did he need to be kept locked up for days? I don’t know. But that’s on those doctors and not the NYPD.

Of all these “secret recording,” I couldn’t find one of them that says anything that isn’t common knowledge or makes the speaker look bad. Most of them make the speaker look good!

Here’s Part 1, 2, 3, 4 in the Village Voice. And Lenny Levitt’s most recent take. And my first post on the subject.

(Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.)

A reader pointed me to this story in New York’s Village Voice.

In the 81st Precinct in New York City, a cop, Schoolcraft, secretly recorded roll call and other happenings over the course of the year.

Bold.

Though all he seems to show is something we all should already know. In the NYPD, everybody is under intense pressure to produce good “stats” (arrests and citations) and reduce bad stats (crime numbers). I suppose the good of the tapes is the department may finally have to stop trying to say with a straight face that officers are not under pressure to meet arrest and citation quotas. Compstat has done a lot of good. But the impact of a stat-driven culture on the incoming rank-and-file is not very productive.

The article, which is a bit too long (though I look forward to reading the next installment!), makes some claims I strongly disagree with. For instance, responding officer at a scene certainly has a responsibility to judge the validity of a victim’s claim. Police patrol officers are not just report writers. And detectives who claim otherwise are doing a grave disservice to the majority of police officers.

Overall, reading the story and listening to some of the recordings, I couldn’t help but think what good leaders these were. The men and women leading roll call look out for their troops, warn them of bureaucratic nightmares, and try an instill a strong work ethic.

And some of the stories just make me nostalgic for my policing days. The sergeant who deadpans the danger of mine shafts in Bed-Stuy? What a progressive pedagogical approach (I’m trying to use fancy words here) to help officers not get in trouble for failing to carry… whistle holders. Yes, in the police word, where you put your life on the line almost every day, if they want to, they can bang you for sh*t like not carrying a whistle holder. (Just FYI, I had previously never heardof a whistle holder. In Baltimore, I managed to hold my whistle just fine without a dedicated whistle holder. The whistle, it turns out, makes an excellent key chain for the easy to lose but important to have handcuff key.)

Nobody’s got your whistle holder, and half of you don’t have your whistle. That’s unacceptable. When I fall down the mine shaft, I’m the only one that’s going to be able to call for help. The rest of you are going to have to fire off your gun, and they’ll give you a [reprimand] for that.

I love this guy!

And is this really too much to ask?: “You want to draw penises, draw them in your own memo book.” Hard to argue with that request.

But I think the only reason we didn’t “cock” memo books in the Eastern was because Baltimore cops don’t have memo books. (Is there a point to memo books except creating more paperwork?) Makes me think of my buddy who reads this blog (yeah, I’m talking about you). He would wait for any new LT to finish roll call with the very decent question, “Does anybody have anything?” To which he would answer with unbridled glee, “I have this horrible burning sensation when I pee!”

Cracked me up every time.

Update with working links to all the posts on Schoolcraft.