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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Bronx DA Robert Johnson Hit With Traffic Tickets


Here’s one ticket that won’t get fixed.

Bronx DA Robert Johnson — whose office has indicted more than a dozen NYPD cops for allegedly fixing traffic tickets for friends and family — was slapped with a moving violation himself yesterday.

The 65-year-old top prosecutor was caught making an “improper turn” — sources say an illegal U-turn — while driving on Boston Road at Third Avenue in the Morrisania section.

“What goes around comes around,’’ one law-enforcement source said sarcastically. “Karma is a bitch.”

The 42nd Precinct cop who stopped Johnson had no idea that the prosecutor was driving the 2008 black Saturn when he pulled it over around 8:35 a.m., sources said.
 
But the officer quickly realized whom he’d just caught violating the law when he read the name on the license, sources said.

Johnson never mentioned to the officer he was the DA, sources added, and the cop didn’t acknowledge it.

The chief prosecutor also didn’t try to get out of the ticket, which carries two points and a fine of around $100, sources said.

Instead, he politely gave over his information, took his ticket and drove off, sources said.

Johnson, who lives about 20 minutes away, was apparently heading to work at the time.

He was fewer than five minutes from the courthouse when he was stopped.

The Bronx DA’s spokesman, Steven Reed, declined to comment, other than to say that “the check is already in the mail’’ for the fine.

A driver must rack up 11 points in one 18-month period for any action to occur, such as the suspension of a license.

Records show that Johnson doesn’t have any previous violations.

But the violation may be the least of his worries. Johnson has recently come under fire from NYPD cops for everything from the ticket-fixing indictments to his borough’s notoriously low incarceration rate.

As The Post first reported last fall, Johnson’s office has the worst record of any prosecutor in the city when it comes to actually putting away violent thugs arrested by police.

The veteran prosecutor’s office convicts only 42.8 percent of those arrested for violent felonies, compared with 53.7 percent across the rest of the city, statistics show.

It also takes his assistant DAs an average of 27.7 hours to arraign suspects — nearly four hours past the legal deadline.

Mayor Bloomberg has laced into Johnson specifically for refusing to prosecute certain trespassing arrests in public housing projects.

“If you want to bring crime back to New York, this is probably a good way to do it,” Bloomberg has said of Johnson.

In addition, Johnson has taken plenty of heat from the NYPD on the ticket-fixing scandal, which netted 16 cops and five civilians.
 
 
 
 
 

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