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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Recordings capture NYPD captain threatening to fire less productive cops, discussing summons quotas




An NYPD captain in a scandal-plagued Brooklyn precinct has a name for cops who don't write enough summonses: "do-nothings."

Capt. Alex Perez, in a new set of recordings, threatened to fire less productive cops and talked openly to other supervisors about summons quotas.

"Your workers will get you something," Capt. Alex Perez said on a tape played for the Daily News Friday. "Your do-nothings will get you nothing."

An officer assigned to the 81st Precinct secretly made the tapes and recently turned them over to a lawyer for Officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who was the first to blow the whistle on supervisors.

He sued the NYPD last month, claiming cops forced him into a psych ward after he accused his bosses of fudging crime stats and enforcing quotas.

The latest cop to come forward said Perez expected patrol cops in Bedford-Stuyvesant to pick up the slack if officers assigned to so-called summons details didn't hit the mark.

"A patrol officer can answer 15, maybe 17 calls in an eight-hour tour," the officer said. "You might spend an hour at one job. Perez didn't care. You had to meet the number."

Perez wanted 20 summonses from each shift of cops in four different categories - failure to wear a seat belt, driving while talking on a cell phone, double-parking and parking at a bus stop.

"If day tours contributed with five seat belts and five cell phones a week, five double-parkers and five bus stops a week, okay," the captain said on tape.

He appeared to establish quotas even after the Daily News first reported Schoolcraft's allegations in February, prompting an internal investigation.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said supervisors don't have quotas, just "productivity goals." He said the Perez tapes "sound like managers doing their jobs."

Perez declined to comment.

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