Adrian Schoolcraft

Adrian Schoolcraft
New York City Police Department
Born 1976 (age 36–37)
Place of birth	Killeen, Texas
Years of service	2002–2010
Rank	Police Officer
Awards	Meritorious Police Duty Medal

Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1993–1997
Rank	Corpsman
Unit	USS Blue Ridge
Awards	National Defense Service Medal", "Good Conduct Medal

Adrian Schoolcraft is a suspended New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008–2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. He used the tapes as evidence that arrest quotas were leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrest.

After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was reportedly harassed and reassigned to a desk job. He was subsequently captured in his apartment and brought to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days. In 2010, he released the audio recordings to The Village Voice, leading to the publication of a multi-part series titled "The NYPD Tapes". Schoolcraft has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and Jamaica Hospital.

Biography

Adrian Schoolcraft was born in Killeen, Texas in 1976. His father was a police officer. Schoolcraft joined the United States Navy at age 17 and served for four years (1993–1997) on the USS Blue Ridge near Japan. He won the "National Defense Service Medal", the "Good Conduct Medal", and other formal decorations. He was honorably discharged in 1997 and returned to Texas to work for Motorola.

He moved to New York in 2002, wishing to be closer to his parents (who had since moved to New York state), particularly because his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Driven both by his mother's desire that he become an officer, and by a wish to respond to the September 11 attacks on New York City, he applied to join the NYPD. He passed the entrance exam and joined the force two weeks later.

Schoolcraft drove his mother to chemotherapy appointments in Albany until she died in 2003.

Soon after joining the force, Schoolcraft was deployed to Precinct 75 in Brooklyn to join Operation Impact. After 14 months in the NYPD, he was transferred to Precinct 81 in Bedford–Stuyvesant. Schoolcraft drank alcohol much less frequently than his peers, and became known for rescuing abandoned animals. After a few years on the force, he began to raise issues about understaffing and overtime, saying that the precinct had too few officers to do a good job.

He received the Meritorious Police Duty Medal in 2006 and in 2008 was cited for his "dedication to the New York City Police Department and to the City of New York". Brooklynites who lived in the area patrolled by Schoolcraft reported that he was the only officer they knew, because he was the only one interested conversing with them.

Recordings

Schoolcraft began recording his conversations in order to respond to public complaints. "I worked in a black community, you can think of the word I was accused of using," he said. He subsequently decided to record police conversations also.

Between 1 June 2008 and 15 October 2009, Schoolcraft recorded conversations at the 81st Precinct police station, responsible for the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, USA. Schoolcraft amassed a set of tapes which, in his view, evidenced rampant corruption and abuse.

Schoolcraft alleges that these tapes show corruption within New York City's 81st Police Precinct.

One of the major issues presented by the tapes is the practice of prioritizing arrest quotas over careful investigation. Schoolcraft says that this mindset leads to wrongful arrests and bad police work. A recording from 31 October 2008 captures precinct commander Steven Mauriello ordering a raid on 120 Chauncy St.: “Everybody goes. I don’t care. You’re on 120 Chauncey and they’re popping champagne? Yoke ’em. Put them through the system. They got bandannas on, arrest them. Everybody goes tonight. They’re underage? Fuck it.” He orders: "Bring 'em in. Lodge them. You're going to go back out and process it later on."

Disclosure

Schoolcraft reports being harassed, particularly in 2009, after he began to voice his concerns within the precinct. He was told he needed to increase arrest numbers, and received a bad evaluation. The next day, he found a paper in his locker reading: "If you don't like your job, maybe you should get another job."

Schoolcraft reports that the Department directed him toward psychological treatment rather than taking his concerns seriously. When he discussed issues like understaffing and stop-and-frisk with NYPD psychologist Catherine Lamstein, she directed him to surrender his weapons. Schoolcraft was reassigned to a desk job.

In October 2009, Schoolcraft disclosed his findings to NYPD investigators in a meeting that was supposed to be confidential.

His father contacted David Durk, a retired detective who became famous working on similar issues (of NYPD corruption) with whistleblower Frank Serpico. Durk contacted an officer in NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau. On 27 October Schoolcraft was placed under "forced monitoring".

On 31 October, Lt. Timothy Caughey confiscated Schoolcraft's memo book, which contained descriptions of Schoolcraft's findings. Caughey locked himself in a copy room for three hours. Soon after, Schoolcraft's immediate superior, Rasheena Huffman, indicated that the Department had made copies of his research.

Raid and involuntary commitment

By the end of his 31 October shift, Schoolcraft felt sick and intimidated. With permission from Huffman, he left the station an hour early, went home, took some Nyquil, and fell asleep. Several hours later, his apartment was raided on official orders. At 6PM, his father called with a warning message. He looked out the window and saw police massing in the street. He stayed on the phone. After 9PM, he heard people moving upstairs. The officers obtained a key to the apartment after telling the landlord that Schoolcraft was suicidal.

Schoolcraft turned on two tape recorders before the officers entered, and the subsequent interaction was recorded. About twelve high-ranking officers were present. Schoolcraft was interrogated by Deputy Chief Michael Marino, who asked: "Adrian ... you didn't hear us knocking on that door?" Schoolcraft said no and after further questions said, "Chief, if you were woken up in your house how would you behave? What is this, Russia?" The two argued about whether Schoolcraft's early departure was authorized, and over whether he would then return to the station.

Schoolcraft agreed to check in to a nearby hospital (Forest Hills) for high blood pressure. When paramedics say they're taking him to Jamaica Hospital, he said he was refusing medical attention ("RMA"). Marino said: "Listen to me, they are going to treat you like an EDP [[[Serious emotional disturbance|emotionally disturbed person]]]. Now, you have a choice. You get up like a man and put your shoes on and walk into that bus, or they're going to treat you as an EDP and that means handcuffs."

Marino eventually ordered, "Just take him. I can't f------ stand him anymore."

One tape recorder was discovered and confiscated, but the other one kept rolling.

Schoolcraft was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. There, he was handcuffed tightly to a bed and prevented from using a telephone, by orders of police who were present. An officer told the hospital that police had "followed him home and he had barricaded himself, and the door had to be broken to get to him."

Schoolcraft's father eventually located and retrieved his son. The family received a bill $7,185.

The hospital's report states: "He is coherent, relevant with goal directed speech and good eye contact. ... His memory and concentration is intact. He is alert and oriented" but "his insight and judgment are impaired". The report also says: "He expressed questionable paranoid ideas of conspiracy and cover-ups going [on] in the precinct. Since then, he started collecting 'evidence' to 'prove his point' and became suspicious 'They are after him.'"

After discharge, Schoolcraft was suspended from the force and stopped receiving a paycheck. Police officers visited his house regularly in the following weeks.

"The NYPD Tapes"

The recordings were later published as a series of articles titled "The NYPD Tapes", and led to allegations that "commanders at the 81st Precinct pushed ticket and arrest quotas on officers."

In the analysis of Graham Rayman, writing for the Voice, this pressure to arrest had major effects, including:

• A ninefold increase in "stop-and-frisk" events.
• "... several dozen gun arrests, hundreds of arrests on other charges, and thousands of summonses for things like disorderly conduct, trespassing, and loitering."
• Arrests on trivial charges, such as a person not displaying identification several feet away from their own house. ("Mental health worker Rhonda Scott suffered two broken wrists during a 2008 arrest for not having her ID card while standing on her own stoop.")
• Entire groups of people arrested without charges, simply for congregating on street corners. (These group arrests were often ordered directly by precinct commander Steven Mauriello and became known as "Mauriello specials".)
• A functional 8:30 PM curfew: "After 8:30, it's all on me and my officers, and we're undermanned," said Mauriello on tape. "The good people go inside. The others stay outside."
• "Ghost 250s", fake stop-and-frisk reports with no names, fabricated to make quota at the end of the month.
• A preference for easy arrests, rather than "bag of shit" cases who require supervision or medical treatment. One sergeant said: "Listen, don't bring Mr. Medicine into the stationhouse, because he's going to get free medical care from us that we all pay for, OK, and plus then he gets a nice police escort the whole time that he's there."

Rayman quotes retired NYPD detective Marquez Claxton: "The Police Department is using these numbers to portray themselves as being effective. In portraying that illusion, they have pushed these illegal quotas which force police officers to engage in illegal acts."

These aggressive tactics go hand-in-hand with understaffing on the force. Rayman writes: a" typical day in the 81st Precinct had only three to nine officers patrolling the streets in an area of more than 60,000 people." Understaffing also led officers to work more overtime hours, earning more money but also becoming exhausted.

Rayman's "NYPD Tapes" series won a "Gold Keyboard" award from the New York Press Club.

On September 10, 2010 the nationally syndicated radio program This American Life ran a story on Schoolcraft, usinging his taped conversations as well as interviews with him personally. The New York Times began to cover the story

Further developments

Schoolcraft filed a lawsuit against the NYPD claiming that they both intimidated and retaliated against him. The action seeks $50,000,000 in damages. He said his six-day involuntary hospitalization in Jamaica Hospital Center's psychiatric ward was ordered to "discredit his allegations." Schoolcraft has stated that: "There's not enough money in the state to get me to settle this suit. It's going to trial and there's no way around that – the truth has to come out."

Schoolcraft alleges in the lawsuit that NYPD spokesperson Paul Browne was present at the 31 October 2009 raid. Browne is a "top aide" to Police Chief Raymond Kelly. According to the Village Voice: "If proven true, Browne's presence at Schoolcraft's home on Oct. 31, 2009 suggests that Commissioner Kelly was aware of the decision by Deputy Chief Michael Marino to order Schoolcraft handcuffed and dragged from his own apartment just three weeks after he reported police misconduct to the unit which audits NYPD crime statistics."

In May 2011, a judge ruled that discovery could proceed.

In 2012, a NYPD Report was obtained by the Village Voice which confirmed Schoolcraft's claims of quotas and the underreporting of crimes.

In 2013 a related "Stop-And-Frisk" case went to trial in federal court.

See also

• Knapp Commission
• Mollen Commission
• Robert Leuci
• CompStat

External links

• "Discharge Summary" from Jamaica Hospital

• Archive of Schoolcraft's website inviting other officers to come forward

• Collection of Village Voice reports related to the case.

• This American Life story on Adrian Schoolcraft, September 10 2010 Retrieved September 2010.

• Docket & Filings