Officer Demoted After Writing Traffic Tickets Gets $175,000 Settlement

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 458 points –
nytimes.com

New York City on Tuesday reached a $175,000 settlement with a Staten Island police officer who said he had been a victim of retaliation for giving traffic tickets to people with connections to the upper echelons of the Police Department.

The officer, Mathew Bianchi, filed a lawsuit against the city last May. The suit said that he had been transferred out of his precinct’s traffic unit after Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, asked that he be punished. Officer Bianchi had issued a ticket to a woman with whom Chief Maddrey was said to be friends, according to the suit.

“This settlement is a vindication for our client, allowing him to close this chapter and continue his service with the N.Y.P.D.,” John Scola, Officer Bianchi’s lawyer, said on Tuesday. “We hope that Officer Bianchi’s courage and this decisive outcome will inspire other officers to come forward as whistle-blowers.”

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Original article is paywalled so I looked up another, as from the comments here, it seems some more details are needed. I'll include some snips of a WaPo article here.

One driver giggled when New York police officer Mathew Bianchi pulled her over for talking on her cellphone, because it was the second time in as many days that he had done so, the officer said.

Another was going at least twice the 30-mph speed limit while driving on the wrong side of the street and blowing through red lights, he added.

A third who had been doing 50 mph in a 30-mph zone reacted to Bianchi approaching his Mercedes SUV by fanning out about two dozen “courtesy cards” and telling him to pick one, Bianchi said Wednesday.

In fact, all three of them had the cards issued by the New York Police Department’s biggest union to officers who then give them to family, friends and anyone else they want to be able to get out of low-level encounters with law enforcement, Bianchi told The Washington Post.

“There’s no fear of any kind of enforcement if they have the card,” he added.

Although he let all three of those drivers go, Bianchi eventually got fed up with letting reckless drivers off the hook, some of them repeatedly, and started writing tickets even if they had the cards, he said. That allegedly led to escalating retaliation that in May 2023 resulted in Bianchi suing the city and a police captain after he was pulled off the traffic unit and put on the night shift.

Bianchi patrolled on Staten Island, where he estimated as many as half the drivers he pulled over had one of the cards, he told The Post. Officers can buy 30 of them a year for $1 each, he said. They’re given not only to friends and family, but also in exchange for perks like meal discounts, he said, adding that he believes that is violating the public’s trust that police treat everyone equally.

On Nov. 28, 2018, Bianchi gave a driver a ticket even though she presented a card, the suit states. Several members of the Police Benevolent Association allegedly approached him, one telling him that he had to obey the courtesy-card customs or the union wouldn’t protect him.

Bianchi started objecting to the practice, first to his direct supervisor and then his commanding officer, who told him they couldn’t do much, he said. Then he filed a series of complaints — to the union, NYPD internal affairs and the New York City Department of Investigation — without getting any results, according to the suit.

All the while, Bianchi kept writing courtesy-card-carrying drivers tickets when he thought it was appropriate and kept getting scolded for it, the suit states.

Bianchi said he plans to stay at the NYPD for the foreseeable future, although he plans to use his upcoming windfall to reduce his reliance on the paycheck he gets from the city. He said he hopes that his lawsuit — and his payout — encourage other would-be whistleblowers to speak up about corruption, even if there is a cost.

I'm not sure how much more some of you want out of this guy. He got tired of a crooked system, and at cost to himself, he stood up for the right thing. He's taken more direct action for change than most people ever will. I can't speak of all his actions, but if he went through this much for something like traffic tickets, I don't think he was doing a bunch of bigger corrupt stuff on the side. It would seem we would want more police to follow his example, but instead people here are lumping him in with the rest.

I'm not sure how much more some of you want out of this guy

Don't worry, I'm sure the ACAB brigade will soon be here to scream about how this guy is still horrible because he didn't do everything that they personally demand be done...

As a member of the ACAB brigade, this guy is trying to do what is right. The result is exactly why we say ACAB.

Consider this is about traffic tickets and imagine what this guy’s outcome would be if he found something worse. Like something analogous to the LA sheriff’s department gangs, or the Chicago PD’s secret torture sites. We wouldn’t be reading about a lawsuit that he won.

I'm having trouble finding the article, but a while back, there was a detective who was investigating cop corruption wind up dead.

This isn't the case I think I'm thinking of, but here's one example.

The part that I have the issue with is the A

Clearly it's not all cops, as this guy (and others who try to do the right thing but don't make the news) demonstrates.

The A is because guys like this can’t last in a system designed to force them out.

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I've got a healthy skepticism of authority as much as the next Lemming, which is why I went and saw what info was out there about this. It was easy to find, and it seems to show this guy was retaliated against for doing what was morally right, there doesn't seem to be much denying that. Are we here to role play as wanting social justice, or are we here to support the people doing it? This guy did the literal thing all the top posts here every day say needs to be done: he used his power for good to hold accountable those who were not.

While he may not be Serpico, he's someone we should all be commending in this particular case. We have facts that on multiple occasions he did good for the city at risk to his personal life and career. If someone wants to lump him in with the ones that are corrupt and murderous or look the other way at things like this, they're the asshole. If we don't support this guy, why would we execpt anyone else to follow his lead?

And he's no longer a cop precisely because he was trying to do the morally right thing, that's why ACAB. Anyone not a bastard gets punished for it until they aren't a cop anymore.

Bianchi said he plans to stay at the NYPD for the foreseeable future, although he plans to use his upcoming windfall to reduce his reliance on the paycheck he gets from the city. He said he hopes that his lawsuit — and his payout — encourage other would-be whistleblowers to speak up about corruption, even if there is a cost.

No, he is still a cop and wants to use the money to keep doing what he's been doing and trying to encourage others.

We'll see how long this lasts when they start harassing his family.

Good for him, I hope he posts on social media every day that he is not suicidal and keeps clear of "friendly fire".

We have facts that on multiple occasions he did good for the city at risk to his personal life and career. If someone wants to lump him in with the ones that are corrupt and murderous or look the other way at things like this, they're the asshole. If we don't support this guy, why would we execpt anyone else to follow his lead?

Thank you.

I'm glad to see that there are still people who can think beyond a absolutes and binary situations.

I've had many interactions of all types with police, some good, some bad, and some really bad.

The ones that dealt with my gf's mental health emergency could have really nailed her on a ton of charges, but they seemed to understand better than the rest of us at first that this was mental and not criminal. I don't even know if she got any fines. They worked with the judge after seeing she got professional help and she got her record sealed and now she is doing amazingly well, and though very dramatic, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to her in the long run because she got help.

I do still feel bad for the one civilian she attacked in addition to the cops, because he was absolutely not happy she was essentially set free. It's not something he deserved to have gone through, and I don't expect him to feel better because a stranger was dealing with an untreated disorder. But now she is helping people in a medical job instead of being unable to get any job from having a violent assault record.

A friend's brother was a cop and killed someone who absolutely should not have been shot. The person shot was also going through some mental health thing, so that is really scary that it could have happened to my girlfriend. No charges were brought against him, and he's still with the same department over a decade later. I don't think he's a bad person. I do think he should have faced punishment, and he panicked under pressure and killed someone, so I definitely don't feel he should be a cop.

The only cop that was ever purposefully mean to me ended up getting hit by a drunk driver and hospitalized, and then they caught him with...illegal porn...and I was not unhappy either day those events occurred. I hope he got everything coming to him.

I briefly had another job that had me in regular contact with about a dozen or so police, and while they all seemed nice enough, the ones with personal vehicles with punisher skulls and all that didn't thrill me.

I guess I think there are a lot of systemic problems with American policing, much like this article addresses, on up to police being able to investigate their own crimes, and I think that attracts a disproportionate number of people that will take advantage of that.

But I wouldn't blindly hate anyone for being a cop any more than I'd think every priest, scoutmaster, or whatever was a bad person just because of their job. But if you're in a position of power, and you violate that, I think punishment should be harder and swifter than if it were your standard person. There is just such an increased ability to perpetrate crimes and cover them up, that we need to take away those incentives, not double down on them.

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