A veteran detective who served as an aide to Chief of Internal Affairs Charles Campisi says the NYPD’s corruption-fighting machine is broken and she endorses the appointment of an inspector general.
“I came into the Internal Affairs Bureau because I wanted to make a difference,” Shirley Pelage told the Daily News in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
“Now I have no faith in the unit,” Pelage, 44, said. “Internal Affairs is a broken mechanism.”
“I think an outside agency like an inspector general would be good because when you have someone looking over your shoulder, it keeps you on the up and up,” she said.
Pelage, who grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, and now lives on Staten Island, was assigned to various units within the IAB since 1999, and retired last Friday as a second-grade detective after 20 years on the force.
Her last assignment was at a desk outside Campisi's 12th-floor office in Police Headquarters, gathering sensitive data for the chief’s daily briefings.
She filed a notice of claim Tuesday for a $15 million lawsuit against the city, alleging discriminatory treatment against her and other minority-group colleagues.
“Nobody (in the IAB) can speak up like I am now,” she said. “They’re like the mob. They go to any lengths to protect their image and themselves.”
Her lawyer, Eric Sanders, said, “It is long overdue for a top-to-bottom review of IAB.”
An NYPD spokesman did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
Pelage — a mother of a 3-year-old son and a year-old daughter — was an undercover IAB investigator before working as an aide to Campisi.
Her earlier postings included being assigned to the IAB command center; to a group that investigated corruption in Brooklyn and on Staten Island, and to a unit that cracked down on cops parking illegally using NYPD placards, an initiative begun by Mayor Bloomberg.
When she made the decision to retire, “I was very sad and troubled, but I had no other recourse,” said Pelage, who attended Nazareth Regional High School in East Flatbush.
She said she wanted to get out of the IAB but was blocked by Campisi from being transferred.
“There are good people in IAB, but they’re frustrated by the leadership,” she said.
By John Marzulli / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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