A confidential New York police report about secret recordings made by an officer during roll calls in Brooklyn confirms the allegations made in a five-part series by the Village Voice in 2010, the weekly newspaper says. The Voice reported that the recordings by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft captured his superiors urging police officers to manipulate crime statistics by arresting people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports.
In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting—which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft’s superiors—his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into a psychiatric ward for six days. An investigation was ordered by NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly, but the findings were kept secret. The Voice has obtained that 95-page report, and it shows that the NYPD confirmed Schoolcraft’s allegations, even as the department was attacking his credibility.