To protect, serve and make quota

The Village Voice not long ago ran an eye-opening series that detailed a New York City police precinct where supervisors told officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests.

Eight-year veteran officer Adrian Schoolcraft recorded precinct roll calls, his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

The recordings — made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of New York.

“They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don’t make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics,” the Voice reported. “The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

“As a result, the tapes show, the rank-and-file NYPD street cop experiences enormous pressure in a strange catch-22: He or she is expected to maintain high ‘activity’ — including stop-and-frisks — but, paradoxically, to record fewer actual crimes,” the publication added.

So, what we likely have in the 81st Precinct are more people getting harassed by police, but an area that is probably less safe. Oh, and a lot of unhappy, disillusioned rank-and-file cops. Sounds like a great strategy.

Somehow, one suspects Bedford-Stuyvesant isn’t the only place this kind of thing happens.

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