12 N.Y. Police Held in Corruption Sweep : Probe: Hundreds of cases are jeopardized as officers from a Harlem precinct are rounded up and charged with shakedowns, drug sales and theft.

In one of the worst instances of corruption in New York police history, a dozen officers from the same Harlem precinct were charged Friday with shaking down drug dealers, selling narcotics, stealing cash and filing false arrest reports--throwing hundreds of cases into jeopardy.

Prosecutors charged that the officers stuffed cash into their socks and shirts and into rubber gloves, stole from a safe in the station house, accepted bribes and committed other crimes largely protected by a code of silence.

“A police officer’s badge is in the shape of a shield, the symbol of a protector,” said Police Commissioner William Bratton, who watched two of the men being arrested when they reported for work. “These officers allegedly took the shield and turned it into a weapon.”

According to court papers, one of the officers bragged to an undercover operative in the days before his arrest: “One thing that was good, midnights. . . . . We never talked to anybody, we did our own things, made our money.”

Prosecutors said they expected more arrests as the Police Department struggles to eradicate its most serious corruption problem in two decades. Some investigators believe that as many as 10 out of 75 precincts may be touched by corruption.

Three of the officers have already pleaded guilty to the federal and state charges, which were unsealed on Friday, authorities said.

“We are dealing with the pervasiveness of drugs and the gross impact it has not only in the neighborhoods, but on the Police Department,” Bratton said. “We are dealing with phenomenal sums of money in many instances.”

“As sickening and sad as this pattern of crime is, it must be remembered that the vast majority of our police officers are honest and dedicated and courageous public servants,” said Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.

“These corrupt officers were not examples of New York’s finest,” added Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert M. Morgenthau. “They operated in loose criminal association. They all worked on the midnight tour or the precinct’s anti-crime units.”

White said that as early as 1990, the defendants--who if convicted could receive sentences ranging from seven years to life in prison--began engaging in a pattern of corruption.

Prosecutors asserted that the officers shook down drug dealers, stole drugs and money from investigation sites, illegally searched cars and people, took bribes to refrain from making arrests, tampered with evidence, shot and stole from a drug suspect, and falsified and tampered with evidence.

At one point, investigators equipped a car containing a bag of money with a television camera and then broadcast a radio report that the suspicious vehicle was on a street corner. Officials said that the camera recorded an officer entering the car and trying to stuff money into his pants. When the cash fell out, he put the money into his socks.

Another time, authorities said, officers put cash recovered from drug dealers into rubber gloves and hid the gloves in a Harlem park before pocketing the money.

The largest single theft occurred when two officers allegedly split $100,000 they found in a bag during the search of an apartment four years ago.

Another defendant allegedly stole more than $3,000 from a safe brought into the police station in connection with a burglary investigation. Morgenthau charged that still another policeman committed perjury and as a result, the district attorney’s office was forced to vacate the conviction of a major narcotics dealer.

At a news conference announcing the arrests, Bratton said that he would retire the badges of the officers if convictions were obtained. He held two of them aloft.

“These are the property of the city of New York,” he said. “It is my intention upon the conviction of any of these officers to retire their shields so that no other New York City police officer has to wear the shield that was used in such a dishonorable fashion.”

Police in New York have been plagued by 20-year cycles of corruption. In terms of numbers, investigators believe the problem was larger in the 1970s. But because of the pervasiveness of narcotics in some neighborhoods and the large amounts of cash available for temptation, problems may be more serious in the 1990s.

In an effort to fight corruption, Bratton said, he planned to tighten supervision and provide better screening for people seeking to become police officers. When officers are arrested on corruption charges, he said, it will take place in front of colleagues at police stations whenever possible.

“I had the privilege of seeing them in handcuffs,” the commissioner said of two of the officers.