Investigation of N.Y. Police Hits ‘Blue Wall of Reluctance’

After holding a series of explosive hearings earlier this year, a special mayoral commission has found that “a blue wall of reluctance” to fight corruption exists in New York’s Police Department, and the panel has called for major reforms.

The commission, which released its report Tuesday, said the department has abandoned its responsibility to ensure integrity and has allowed one key anti-corruption unit to “collapse,” while another has all but given up its mission and has even concealed information from prosecutors.

“The commission found a deep-rooted institutional reluctance to uncover corruption in the department,” the report said. “. . . From the top brass down to local precinct commanders and supervisors, there was a pervasive belief that uncovering serious corruption would harm careers and the reputation of the department. There was a debilitating fear of the embarrassment and loss of public confidence that corruption headlines would bring.”

The report said the department’s “Action Desk,” which receives and processes allegations, “routinely discouraged individuals from providing information,” and even superior officers bent on ensuring integrity often lacked the resources or time to do so.

“Officers of all ranks told us that the general feeling in the department was that it was better not to know about, much less report, corruption,” the Mollen Commission, established by Mayor David N. Dinkins in 1992, charged. “A ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ mentality often governed supervisors, patrol officers and even corruption investigators.”

The group, headed by former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Milton Mollen, said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had made a number of laudable reforms. It said Kelly had strengthened internal investigative apparatus. But it recommended further preventive steps, including improved education of recruits and in-service training.

In an interview with The Times, Kelly said that while he accepted the commission’s recommendations, he was disappointed that the report contained “broad allegations without specifics. It tends to besmirch the reputation of a lot of people.”

Mayor-elect Rudolph W. Giuliani said the report “makes a big contribution to the uncovering of information about what appears to be a new and serious form of police corruption.”

“The traditional unwritten rule of 20 years ago that narcotics graft is dirty money has disappeared,” the commission said in its report.

It said that in some precincts, dishonest police officers provide protection for drug dealers, sometimes steal narcotics and firearms from dealers and take money and property seized as evidence.

“Avoiding scandal became more important than fighting corruption,” the commission charged. “. . . As a result, top management believed that it would get no reward and pay a heavy price for vigilance.”

The commission--while stressing that most of New York’s 30,000 police officers remain honest--found that corruption was not limited to the acts of a few rogue cops. It said corruption is endemic to “crime-ridden, narcotics-infested precincts with predominantly minority populations.”

“While the systemic and institutionalized bribery schemes that plagued the department a generation ago no longer exist,” the report continued, “the prevalent forms of police corruption today exhibit an even more invidious and violent character: Police officers assisting and profiting from drug seizures, committing perjury and falsifying statements and brutally assaulting citizens.”

The commission said that problem officers were often transferred to unattractive assignments in crime-ridden precincts “where the opportunities for corruption most abound” and where inexperienced probationary sergeants were often assigned when proven supervisors were most needed.

The commission called for establishing a permanent, independent outside monitor to evaluate the department’s corruption-fighting apparatus and recommend improvements.