Cop Union Hires 'Goodfellas' Lawyer as Ticket Fixing Scandal Grows - DNAinfo.com

Cop Union Hires 'Goodfellas' Lawyer as Ticket Fixing Scandal Grows - DNAinfo.com

"Embroiled in a grand jury probe of widespread NYPD ticket-fixing, the city's largest police union has hired three powerhouse lawyers to deal with the possibility that the union itself could be indicted along with some of its members.

The Patrolman's Benevolent Association has quietly added Edward McDonald, the former head of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Organized Crime Strike Force who starred as himself in the movie "Goodfellas;" Thomas Fitzgerald, the former head of the Criminal Division in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office; and Steven Kartegener, a top criminal defense attorney who once served as head of the Bronx District Attorney’s Appeals Bureau.

The outside specialists have been added to the union's stable of in-house counsel as the PBA circles the wagons against the very real prospect of being accused of violating the state’s version of the federal Racketeering, Influence and Corruption Organization, better known as RICO, statutes.

RICO laws, as Mafia movie aficionados know, were famously created decades ago to take down crime families.

The PBA certainly isn't the mob, but if prosecutors can demonstrate that separate criminal acts — say, fixing tickets and covering up drunk driving incidents — were made by union members acting in concert, then the union could be acting like an "ongoing criminal enterprise," which is how the state law reads.

Anyone close to the investigation, or who has been reading my columns, knows there is plenty of reason for the PBA to be concerned.

Here's why.

A PBA delegate is awakened at home in the middle of the night and told there is a drunken off-duty NYPD cop who just slammed through two light poles and two parking meters. He then calls a delegate at the drunken officer’s precinct on the Upper East Side, who responds to the scene to get the crash cop to sign a document saying it was just an accident. The entire scenario, which made a DWI charge disappear, was laid out in a call from one of the delegates to a top union official.

In other recorded calls, the highest union official in the Bronx is heard calling fellow officers to kill a speeding ticket for Doug Behar, an official with the New York Yankees. After the ticket was canned, the union official then talked to yet another team exec, Sonny Hight, who he informs the ticket is killed and, by the way, he and his wife have tickets for the game but would would like to get into the exclusive Delta Club at Yankee Stadium.

Ironically, the cop whose alleged criminality launched the ticket probe was a former union delegate, but he was initially targeted for his ties to a drug dealer. When Internal Affairs probers heard him on his bugged barbershop phone looking to fix a ticket, the drug probe took off in a new direction.
And on it went.

Nearly 30 NYPD phones were bugged. Cops wanting to kill tickets for relatives and friends routinely turned to union delegates or trustees to get the job done. Hundreds upon hundreds of summonses were deep-sixed so casually that it seemed killing tickets was part of their job description. There was even worse conduct involving DWIs and domestic violence cover-ups. As many as two dozen officers face criminal charges, and hundreds more face internal NYPD disciplinary action."

Read more: http://www.dnainfo.com/20110721/manhattan/cop-union-hires-goodfellas-lawyer-fend-off-possible-criminal-enterprise-charges#ixzz1Sqb289g3