What public body conducted an investigation into police corruption in New York City in the early 1970s that uncovered a widespread network of payoffs and bribes?

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December 28, 1972, Page 22Buy Reprints

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The Knapp Commission's assertion that corruption was a disease that in 1971 af fected well over half of New York's policemen contradicts the statements by countless politicians and law enforcement officials that the overwhelming majority of all policemen are honest.

The commission's assessment of the extent of police corrup tion was contained in its final report, the product of an in vestigation begun more than 31 months ago after publication in The New York Times of articles disclosing widespread graft and the failure of city and police officials to investigate specific allegations of corruption.

The final report — which praised the efforts of Police Commissioner Patrick V. Mur phy to reduce corruption de spite the judgment that it was indulged in to some extent by a “sizable majority” of police men a year after he was named Commissioner — repeated the distinction between the “grass eater” and the “meat eater” the commission had drawn in its summary report, released last August.

Distinction Made

“The overwhelming majority of those who do take payoffs are grass eaters, who accept gratuities and solicit five and ten and twenty dollar payments from contractors, tow truck operators, gamblers, and the like, but do not aggressively pursue corruption payments,” the report said.

“Meat eaters, probably only a small percentage of the force, spend a good deal of their work ing hours aggressively seeking out situations they can exploit for financial gain, including gambling, narcotics and other serious offenses which can yield payments of thousands of dollars.”

The commission said its in vestigation had found that “or ganized crime is the single big gest source of police corruption, through its control of the city's gambling, narcotics, loan‐shark ing and illegal sex‐related enter prises like homosexual after hours bars and pornography, all of which the department con siders mob‐run.”

The second largest source of graft, according to the report, was “legitimate business seeking to ease its way through the maze of city ordinances and regulations.

“Major offenders are con struction contractors and sub contractors, liquor licensees and managers of businesses like trucking firms and parking lots, which are likely to park large numbers of vehicles illegally.”

Two smaller sources of pay ments to policemen, the report said, “are private citizens, like motorists caught breaking laws, and small‐time criminals like gypsy fortune tellers, purse snatchers and pickpockets who may attempt to buy their free dom from an arresting officer.”

The report distinguished be tween the payment of bribes in return for specific favors of en forcement or nonenforcement and the acceptance of gratui ties, Christmas payments, free meals and reduced‐cost mer chandise, which the commis sion said was “by far the most widespread form of miscon duct” it had found among New York policemen.

In discussing the widely ac cepted nature of gratuities, the commission report cited the ex periences of two former high ranking police officials.

One involved City Council President Sanford Garelik, the former chief inspector, who, the former chief inspector, who, ac cording to the commission, tes tified in executive session that he had received gratuites from businessmen. Instead of return ing these gifts, Mr. Garelik told tthe commission, he attempted to respond by returning other gifts. A spokesman for Mr. Garelik said the gifts often were such things as neckties and it was “unrortunate and unfair” that the commission had used the words “gratuity” and “gifts” interchangeably.

The second incident de scribed by the commission in volved its previously disclosed finding that former Chief of Detectives Albert A. Seedman had permitted the New York Hilton Hotel to pick up an $84.30 dinner bill, a finding that prompted Commissioner 1Murphy to relieve Chief Seed man of his command pending an inquiry.

Different Version Cited

One week later, the report said, Commissioner Murphy “released a statement outlining a version of the affair which was significantly different from the one Chief Seedman had given our staff attorney.”

“While he [Chief Seedman] originally had ascribed the free meal (including the tip) to an invitation from the hotel in specific recognition of services rendered, the statement issued by the Commissioner indicated that he had gone with friends to the hotel fully expecting to pay for the meal, had simply made no ‘fuss’ when the man agement failed to present a bill, and had covered his embarrass ment by leaving a ‘large tip.’”

The commission, aside from noting that Mr. Murphy's re instatement of Chief Seedman to head the detectives had seriously undermined the Com missioner's previous warnings against corruption, did not at tempt to resolve the apparent conflict between the two expla nations of why Mr. Seedman and his three guests had ac cepted the free meal.

Finally, the report listed other kinds of police corruption that were not independently inves tigated by the commission, but which had come to its atten tion either as the result of criminal indictments or as a result of unverified testimony of large numbers of policemen.

This list included payoffs from loan sharks, hijackers, street peddlers and persons in the garment district. The list also mentioned corruption in connection with the handling of dead bodies, the sale of pistol permits and information about criminal records, and the police involvement in stealing goods from already burglarized estab lishments.

Corruption Detailed

But the commission devoted its most extensive and detailed discussion to corruption in narcotics law enforcement, which the report said “has grown in recent years to the point where high‐ranking police officials acknowledge it to be the most serious problem facing the department.”

Among the kinds of narcotic corruption with which the com mission said it had become fa miliar were policemen financ ing heroin transactions, keeping money or narcotics or both that had been confiscated at the time of an arrest or raid, selling narcotics to addict informants in return for stolen goods, il legally tapping the telephones of suspects to obtain incrimi nating evidence to be used either in making cases against the suspects or blackmailing them, providing armed protec tion for narcotics dealers and introducing potential customers to narcotics pushers.

The report, the basic investi gation for which ended in Oc tober, 1971, did not mention the wholesale theft of heroin and cocaine from the police prop erty clerk, which Commissioner Murphy announced two weeks ago.

Commission's Background

FORMED: The Knapp Commission was appointed by Mayor Lindsay on May 21, 1970, following publication by The New York Times of articles alleging Widespread corruption in the Police Department and official laxity in dealing with the problem. The first article appeared on April 25, 1970.

PURPOSE: To identify the patterns of corruption, if any, that existed in the department, examine the machinery for combating it and recommend necessary changes.

FUNDS: Total budget was $749,120, of which $325,000 was appropriated by the. City Council on the recom mendation of Mayor Lindsay. The Law Enforcement Assist ance Administration, a branch of the Federal Justice Department, provided $290,120 in a series of grants. The rest came from private foundations.

POWERS: Commission could subpoena witnesses and documents but could not force witnesses to testify by granting immunity. Commission also was not empowered to obtain court‐authorized wiretaps and bugs.

STAFF: Chief Counsel Michael F. Armstrong, six associate and assistant counsels, 13 investigators and a small clerical staff. Investigators consisted of former agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two former Immigration Service one former Army counter intelligence officer, one fomer New York City policeman and, on loan, fours Internal Revenue Service agents, one agent from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and one Postal Service agent.

MEMBERS: Whitman Knapp, now a Federal judge, was chairman. Other members were Joseph Monserrat, now president of Board of Education; Franklyn A. Thomas, former deputy police commissioner and currently president of the Bedford‐Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation; Cyrus R. Vance, Wall Street lawyer and dormer Deputy Secretary of Defense. Arnold Baurnan, a lawyer and one of the com mission's original members, resigned in February, 1971, and was replaced by John E. Sprizza, a professor at Fordham Law School.

The commission did say, however, that despite a major police investigation and shake up of the narcotics division in 1968, its investigators had found the division was “still pervaded by corruption.”

To support this conclusion, the commission cited the testi mony of high‐ranking police of ficials, such as that by Chief of Patrol Donald F. Cawley; numerous individual indict ments and convictions by both the state and Federal Govern ment, and the findings of a lengthy investigation by the State Commission of Investiga tion.

In addition, the report quoted the two hard‐core heroin ad dicts, registered police inform ants known as Tank and Slim, who worked as undercover agents for the Commission.

“While these informants' credibility is necessarily sus pect, there is ample evidence from other sources that the extortion practices they de scribed were common occur rences in the narcotics division at the time of the Commis sion's investigation,” the report said.

The commission quoted their secret undercover agents as saying that if the police felt there was little risk during an official raid “they would take whatever money and narcotics were available and let the sell er go.”

Amounts Called Small

“If the amount of money was small,” the commission report continued, “they would usually arrest the seller but still keep most of the narcotics, turning in only the amount necessary to charge a felony or misde meanor as the case might be.”

The report said the inform ants had stated “that three out of every four times they went out on a raid with plainclothes men from the Narcotics Divi sion no arrests were made and scores of illegal seizures ranged from a few hundred dollars to as much as $20,000 on one oc casion, with the informants getting some money and quan tities of drugs as compensa tion.”

The commission said another method of exacting payoffs in volved illegal wiretaps and bugs, which were used to col lect hard evidence against major drug dealers and thus force them to make large bribes or face arrest.

“Theoretically,” the commis sion observed, “police may not secretly tap a suspect's phone without a warrant. However, since strict constitutional safe guards and a certain amount of red tape surround the pro cedure for obtaining a warrant, it is not uncommon for narcotic detectives to monitor and re cord the conversations of sus pects without the required court order.”

Discussing the impact of po lice corruption on the flow of narcotics in the city, the report quoted Commissioner Murphy's assertion on April 20, 1971, that “corruption is not a sig nificant factor either in the in cidence of narcotics addiction or in the volume of narcotics traffic.”

The commission acknowl edged that many factors, in cluding crowded courts, the dif ficulty in obtaining evidence and the widespread public de mand for drugs influenced the enforcement of the narcotics laws.

Public Attitude Cited

“Nevertheless,” the commis sion said in one of its key con clusions, “there is enough af firmative of narcotics‐related police corruption to justify a loss of public confidence in the department and to diminish the self‐esteem of its members.”

Noting that the public understood, if not condoned, police involvement with gamblers, the report said the complicity of some policemen in narcotics was “a crime considered utterly heinous by a large segment of society” that has had “a devas tating effect on the public's at titude toward the department.

The commission's detailed 283‐page report offered many separate chapters on the dif ferent kinds of police corrup tion its investigators had turned up during the 31 months of its official existence. Among them were the following:

¶Policemen, especially those in plainclothes units, extorted bribes from gambling opera tions throughout the city on a regular, highly systematic basis.”

¶Payoffs from contractors seeking to ease the enforce ment of a variety of city regu lations were the rule rather than the exception and consti tuted a major source of graft to the uniformed police.

¶Payoffs from bars and res taurants were found to be the second most lucrative source of income for uniform men and in some precincts virtually all bars provided free meals, drinks and payments at Christ mas and vacation.

¶Noting that illegally parked cars and trucks caused traffic jams, the commission said it had found many parking and monthly concerns made regular monthly payoffs to the police, which in one case went from $600 to $800 a week during the commission's hearings.

¶For overlooking the high pressured sales tactics often used by tow ‐ truck operators and providing a variety of other favors, the two police men responding to the scene of an accident “commonly re ceived $20, although they sometimes picked up more later if they went to the garage and found the towing company did indeed get authorization for an expensive repair job.”

¶A major auto‐finance com pany was found to pay from 1$25 to $100 in return for in formation permitting the speedy retrieval of cars the company was financing and the police had seized as evidence.

¶The acceptance of gratui ties — free meals, free goods and cash payments — was “by far the most widespread form of misconduct the commission found in the department.”

Businessmen questioned by investigators, said the gratui ties were simply to promote goodwill.

“Almost all expected to re ceive either extra or better po lice service than given to the public and many expected the police to overlook minor illegal acts or conditions,” the report said.