Some N.Y. Police Labeled Invidious as ‘Street Gangs’

Some groups of New York City police officers have become virtual “street gangs” that terrorize minority neighborhoods and traffic in drugs, an investigation into police corruption concluded Thursday.

The 22-month investigation by the Mollen Commission was the most sweeping in 23 years, since the Knapp Commission report found widespread corruption in the city’s police precincts.

Unlike the Knapp hearings, the Mollen Commission did not find a systematic pattern of corruption pervading the department. Instead it said that “a new and more invidious form of corruption has infected parts of this city.” It said the groups “are more akin to street gangs: small, loyal, flexible, fast-moving and often hard-hitting.”

The panel recommended that an independent commission be created to keep watch on how the department polices itself.

“The fight against corruption can only be won if the department itself is committed to aggressively investigate and uproot corruption on all fronts,” the report said.

The recommendations made by the five-member panel pose a problem for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican who was elected last fall with the strong support of police unions.

Giuliani refused to say if he would back the idea of an outside panel, but said at a news conference that he supports “most if not all” of the commission’s 100 recommendations.

The commission was formed by former Mayor David N. Dinkins after it became apparent that the nation’s largest police force, with nearly 31,000 officers, was not rooting out corruption.

One officer, Michael Dowd, continued working for six years despite 16 complaints that he was involved in illicit drug sales. Dowd, who was arrested in 1992 by officers from Suffolk County on eastern Long Island and who testified before the commission, is being held for sentencing on federal narcotics charges.

The report said Dowd’s group and others operated as an organized cell with special radio codes to alert members when internal affairs investigators were in the area. Members had specific jobs when conducting their illegal raids.

It said the officers agreed to share the spoils of their illegal acts, but in most cases the money was not shared unless the other officers were present.

“There is no honor among thieves, even if they happen to be police officers,” the report said.

The report did not accuse any senior officers of knowingly ignoring specific cases of corruption, but said they were not eager to deal with the problem.

It also blamed the police officers’ union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn., of encouraging a combative relationship between officers and management, and in some cases of tipping off officers about corruption probes.

Commission Chairman Milton Mollen, a former state Supreme Court judge, said fundamental changes must be made to avoid what appears to be a 20-year cycle of police corruption in the city.

But he noted that the mentality of police officers closing ranks has been around for more than 100 years. “We will not be so presumptuous to assume we can change it overnight,” he said.