Cops as Pushers

In its first week of hearings on police corruption in New York City, the Knapp Commission exposed mostly "clean" graft--that is, the free meals, liquor and tips that are handed out by businessmen and gamblers as a matter of routine. Last week the commission moved on to "dirty" graft--the payoffs from narcotics pushers that used to be considered taboo even by cops on the take. A mixed media presentation of film, tapes and testimony showed that far too many cops are now as willing to take dirty money as clean.

The week's first witness, Waverly Logan, described his downfall on the Preventive Enforcement Patrol, an elite force made up of members of minority groups. "It was like being born again," Logan recalled his feelings when he first got the assignment. But he was soon frustrated when his superiors kept freeing the men he arrested. Tempted by easy money, he started shaking down narcotics dealers and gamblers and was eventually making scores of $1,500 a month. That was only average, he testified. Heavy scorers made $3,000 a month.

Narc Pushers. Logan was not caught, as previous witnesses had been, by the Knapp Commission, a five-man panel named for its chairman, Whitman Knapp, a Wall Street lawyer. He came forward voluntarily after he had been dismissed from the force last year for taking a $100 bribe from a narcotics dealer. Wishing to get back on the force, he offered to get narcotics informants to cooperate with the commission. Two of his informants were wired with tape recorders and transmitters. These were used to monitor their illicit dealings with policemen. Meetings took place on street corners, in automobiles and, in one instance, just two doorways from a precinct house.

The tapes disclosed that the "narcs" became pushers themselves, conducting their business openly. In exchange for heroin, they received a variety of stolen goods. A 40-second color film showed a cop being handed four bottles of whisky by an informant, who was given in return an envelope filled with heroin. Another cop ordered two shipments of liquor to be sent to his home, although he was not able to receive one of them because he had to attend a meeting on corruption at the station house.

With all the loot that was coming their way, the cops finally grew finicky about what they would accept. "I don't want Pall Mall, either," a cop complained on tape to an informant, who then asked: "What about Winston?" Sniffed the cop: "No, I don't know anybody that smokes Winston." When an informant offered to procure some "Sherry Herring" for a cop, the officer remonstrated: "Cherry Heering, Cherry Heering. If you're going to be a dealer in liquor, you have to know your stuff."

Even though each member of the city's 400-man narcotics street squads has at least one informant working for him, corrupt cops hungered for more. Logan testified that they sometimes threatened a man with a "flake," or false arrest, to force him to become an informant. Logan once approached a man selling wigs on a street in Harlem. He told the merchant that he would be arrested for possession of stolen goods unless he provided narcotics tips. He did. It was scarcely news when a subsequent witness, Paul Curran, chairman of the State Commission of Investigation, called the whole narcotics enforcement program a "monumental failure."

Saying Thank You. Other testimony made clear that police corruption --"clean" or "dirty"--cannot exist without the connivance of the public. It was estimated that the cost of city building is increased by as much as 5% a year because of the bribes that contractors pay the police. The records of seven of the city's top hotels showed that they have been giving the cops $60,000 worth of free meals and rooms a year. From January to May of this year the New York Hilton provided 144 meals to 80 cops for a total bill of $4,662. In the first half of 1971, the Taft Hotel supplied free rooms for cops at a cost of $2,520. Though unlawful tips to public employees are punishable by up to a year in prison in New York, the hotel management dismissed the matter as a fact of life in the city. Said H. Richard Penn, an attorney for the Hilton: "It's the hotel's way of saying 'thank you!' "

The one genuine hero to emerge in the course of the sordid hearings, George Burkert, 23, was repeatedly interrupted by applause as he told how he rebuffed every effort by the cops to shake him down. A nighttime tow-truck driver, Burkert was constantly harassed by the police for not playing ball. He was handed tickets for a variety of niggling offenses, such as not turning on his license-plate light. Once he was issued 13 parking tickets in 26 minutes while he was sitting in a station house where he had been taken by the cops. Two police captains even paid visits to his boss and said Burkert was a troublemaker who had to go. Burkert was fired. The same thing happened at his next job. His boss told him that the cops had threatened to "start harassing my drivers" if he did not fire him.

Fed up, Burkert decided to do what the cops wanted him to do--but for the benefit of the Knapp Commission. Properly wired, he made a series of payoffs to the police, climaxed by a $30 bribe handed to two patrolmen right outside a station house. The transaction was filmed by a TV camera crew in a panel truck. The cops spotted the camera and pursued the truck. They managed to stop it, but let it go after the "producer" said they were only filming street scenes. Still, the cops were worried. What if the crew had been working for the Knapp Commission? One cop put in a call to Burkert. The cop suggested that, if they had been trapped, Burkert should say he had borrowed the money the night before and was only paying it back. Tf that did not work, Burkert might say: " 'Ah, Jeez, I was counting my own money, that's all. Jeez, I might have leaned my hand into the patrol car.' I mean you can say anything."

Permanent Surveillance. Though the names of most of the corrupt cops were omitted from the hearings that concluded last week, the commission suggested that numerous indictments would be forthcoming. The public can only reply that it has heard all this before; corruption is exposed, an uproar is created that soon subsides. The cops revert to their old practices, if they ever really abandoned them. But it is possible that this time the outrage may be sustained. Chairman Knapp proposed that a permanent investigation commission be set up once his group disbands. That will be after further hearings next month when Mayor Lindsay's aides will be called to testify. The commission is expected to ask the Lindsay administration why the mayor failed to respond when two policemen, David Durk and Frank Serpico, reported corruption among fellow officers to the mayor's office as long ago as 1967.

Another hopeful sign for combatting corruption is the leadership exercised by the police commissioner, Patrick Murphy. Though he has rebuked the Knapp Commission for smearing the whole force with the tainted testimony of a few rogue cops, he has been making wholesale transfers and demotions to weed out graft in the department. He has also shifted accountability for corruption from headquarters to the precinct level. The commission hearings have strengthened his hand. Now he does not have to bear the burden of shaking up the force alone; he can point to public pressure as forcing him to act.

Neither Murphy nor anybody else will be able to eliminate payoffs entirely. Says Harvard Professor of Government James Q. Wilson: "It's very difficult for an officer to refuse a free cup of coffee; the person who offers it to him regards it as criticism or repudiation if the officer makes a big deal out of not accepting." The problem is at what point a tolerable gratuity slides into graft. The line cannot be officially drawn, since the department must be on record in favor of total purity. But word will filter down; though only de facto, it will be no less binding. "One of the problems so characteristic of any democratic society," says Wilson, "is that to achieve a very important objective, you have to be able to claim that you're trying to achieve an impossible objective."

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