New York City police officers under the gun in what the New York Daily News calls a massive ticket-fixing scandal are sweating bullets as a grand jury started weighing whether to indict them on a slew of corruption charges. “Guys are nervous,” said one officer who is wrapped up in the wide-ranging probe. “It’s a bad time to be a cop.” The grand jury in the Bronx began deliberating the fates of 17 cops – including at least eight union officials – on charges of perjury, bribery, grand larceny, records tampering, and official misconduct.
A handful of cops and civilians linked to a suspected Bronx drug dealer also face indictment, as do four cops who swept an assault charge against them under the rug. The probe has dragged on for two years, with Internal Affairs Bureau investigators and prosecutors gathering evidence on the actions of more than 500 cops. Wiretaps on more than two dozen cops, most of them union delegates, uncovered a range of crimes unrelated to fixing tickets. Most cops are being dealt with in NYPD disciplinary hearings, but the “worst of the worst” had their cases turned over to the Bronx district attorney. “All we can do is hope they see it the way we saw it – as a professional courtesy,” one officer said.