Two cops in New York City were “forced to retire,” local outlets are reporting, because instead of investigating cases, they simply faked the paperwork while going through the motions. Even though they’re overworked and underpaid, with a big red target on their backs at all times, police officers are still supposed to actually do the job.
Cops retire in disgrace
Two NYPD cops “were forced to retire after the department discovered they lied about investigating cases, including domestic violence and drug complaints.” Internal department records provide all the details. Officer number one is Eric Cabrera.
While assigned to the 113th Precinct in Jamaica, he “improperly closed” 25 domestic violence investigations back in 2019. He was going through a divorce of his own at the time. Officers are human, too. He decided to “prioritize more serious cases over minor cases.”
Cabrera is accused of “making false entries in the department’s case monitoring system, which tracks investigative steps.” For instance, one case which didn’t get the diligence due was a harassment complaint where the suspect texted “I’m going to kill you.”
They probably didn’t mean it. Another one was where a suspect sent threatening texts warning she was going to “come for the victim and burn her house and car.” Everyone says things like that in New York, cops say in self-defense.
Another case which Cabrera fudged and shuffled into limbo was “an identity theft case where the suspect used the victim’s date of birth and Social Security number to get an apartment in Georgia and open a cellphone account.” Another one too minor for the cops to get involved with involved “an incident where a tenant shoved her landlord and threw garbage on his car.”
Another time, he blew off “the theft of 10 bags of potato chips from a car which also had its rear passenger windows broken.” At his hearing he testified that he “was being assigned 300 cases a year and I was being harassed by the lieutenant to get the cases closed on time.” The court agreed, noting that “the long hours he was working led to the end of his marriage.” He got to keep his pension.
Brooklyn North Narcotics
The second of the two cops forced into retirement is Detective Thomas Mannion, “caught falsifying entries 11 times in NYPD records in 2020.” He’s of the opinion that if you’ve seen one drug house you’ve seen them all.
“Mannion claimed in investigative memos that he visited places where drug activity was reported, when he never actually did.” He took the word of people reporting the drug sales for it.
Mannion “did not visit the location even though he submitted reports that claimed he had done so.” Cops aren’t supposed to lie like that. He wasn’t counting on high tech accounting methods used to track every budget penny to see where it goes.
“The detective’s misconduct was discovered when investigators compared his entries with GPS data from his NYPD vehicle.”
Like practically all the other cops on the force, Mannion “blamed his actions on stress caused by staffing shortages in his command from the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.” Those rioting anarchists were too much for the police. Especially because arresting them was an exercise in futility when the prosecutors declined to press charges.
If the prosecutors could shirk their duties, why not cut a few corners. “The demands of the job became ‘overwhelming.‘ His wife was pregnant at the time, adding to the pressures he faced,” the decision concedes.
