An NYPD officer who claimed he was handcuffed and hauled off to a psych ward after he blew the whistle on supervisors faking crime statistics to make the stats look better reached a $600,000 settlement with the city on Tuesday.
It was Halloween night in 2009 when Adrian Schoolcraft said his fellow officers burst into his Queens home, declared him an emotionally disturbed person and brought him to a psychiatric facility.
The officer, who worked in Brooklyn, had made hundreds of hours of secret tapes while on duty that chronicled everything from roll calls to locker room chatter to bosses yelling at him. He also claimed supervisors forged crime statistics to make the stats look better than they were.
Among other things, Schoolcraft alleged that officers were being told to hand out more summonses and make more arrests while others were downgrading crimes on purpose to make their precinct's numbers appear better. Schoolcraft claimed that officers who didn't were told they would be transferred or given undesirable schedules.
In October 2009, officers from the department's emergency service unit went with a police chief to Schoolcraft's home in Queens and forced him into an ambulance, he alleged. Schoolcraft was suspended from the force after his involuntary hospital stay and went into self-exile in upstate New York as his lawyer filed a $50 million civil rights lawsuit against the city.
On Tuesday, he reached a settlement with New York City and several former superiors. The settlement, which awards him $600,000, also includes back pay and benefits beginning in December 2009. The case had been set to go to trial in October.
"We are pleased that we were able to reach a just and fair resolution of this dispute with Adrian Schoolcraft," Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city's Corporation Counsel, said Tuesday. Paolucci said the settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing, but was "in the best interest of the city."
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The only officer who was not represented by the city in the case, Insp. Steven Mauriello, said in a statement through his union Tuesday that he was disappointed with the settlement.
"Inspector Mauriello is disappointed this case settled," his union president Roy Richter said. "Although he was fully indemnified by the City, the Inspector was anticipating a trial decision that would provide a truthful account in a court of law."
Schoolcraft's attorney, Nathaniel Smith, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
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Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.
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