New York City on Tuesday reached a $175,000 settlement with a Staten Island police officer who said he had been a victim of retaliation for giving traffic tickets to people with connections to the upper echelons of the Police Department.
The officer, Mathew Bianchi, filed a lawsuit against the city last May. The suit said that he had been transferred out of his precinct’s traffic unit after Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, asked that he be punished. Officer Bianchi had issued a ticket to a woman with whom Chief Maddrey was said to be friends, according to the suit.
“This settlement is a vindication for our client, allowing him to close this chapter and continue his service with the N.Y.P.D.,” John Scola, Officer Bianchi’s lawyer, said on Tuesday. “We hope that Officer Bianchi’s courage and this decisive outcome will inspire other officers to come forward as whistle-blowers.”
Don’t worry, I’m sure the ACAB brigade will soon be here to scream about how this guy is still horrible because he didn’t do everything that they personally demand be done…
I’ve got a healthy skepticism of authority as much as the next Lemming, which is why I went and saw what info was out there about this. It was easy to find, and it seems to show this guy was retaliated against for doing what was morally right, there doesn’t seem to be much denying that. Are we here to role play as wanting social justice, or are we here to support the people doing it? This guy did the literal thing all the top posts here every day say needs to be done: he used his power for good to hold accountable those who were not.
While he may not be Serpico, he’s someone we should all be commending in this particular case. We have facts that on multiple occasions he did good for the city at risk to his personal life and career. If someone wants to lump him in with the ones that are corrupt and murderous or look the other way at things like this, they’re the asshole. If we don’t support this guy, why would we execpt anyone else to follow his lead?
Thank you.
I’m glad to see that there are still people who can think beyond a absolutes and binary situations.
I’ve had many interactions of all types with police, some good, some bad, and some really bad.
The ones that dealt with my gf’s mental health emergency could have really nailed her on a ton of charges, but they seemed to understand better than the rest of us at first that this was mental and not criminal. I don’t even know if she got any fines. They worked with the judge after seeing she got professional help and she got her record sealed and now she is doing amazingly well, and though very dramatic, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to her in the long run because she got help.
I do still feel bad for the one civilian she attacked in addition to the cops, because he was absolutely not happy she was essentially set free. It’s not something he deserved to have gone through, and I don’t expect him to feel better because a stranger was dealing with an untreated disorder. But now she is helping people in a medical job instead of being unable to get any job from having a violent assault record.
A friend’s brother was a cop and killed someone who absolutely should not have been shot. The person shot was also going through some mental health thing, so that is really scary that it could have happened to my girlfriend. No charges were brought against him, and he’s still with the same department over a decade later. I don’t think he’s a bad person. I do think he should have faced punishment, and he panicked under pressure and killed someone, so I definitely don’t feel he should be a cop.
The only cop that was ever purposefully mean to me ended up getting hit by a drunk driver and hospitalized, and then they caught him with…illegal porn…and I was not unhappy either day those events occurred. I hope he got everything coming to him.
I briefly had another job that had me in regular contact with about a dozen or so police, and while they all seemed nice enough, the ones with personal vehicles with punisher skulls and all that didn’t thrill me.
I guess I think there are a lot of systemic problems with American policing, much like this article addresses, on up to police being able to investigate their own crimes, and I think that attracts a disproportionate number of people that will take advantage of that.
But I wouldn’t blindly hate anyone for being a cop any more than I’d think every priest, scoutmaster, or whatever was a bad person just because of their job. But if you’re in a position of power, and you violate that, I think punishment should be harder and swifter than if it were your standard person. There is just such an increased ability to perpetrate crimes and cover them up, that we need to take away those incentives, not double down on them.
And he’s no longer a cop precisely because he was trying to do the morally right thing, that’s why ACAB. Anyone not a bastard gets punished for it until they aren’t a cop anymore.
No, he is still a cop and wants to use the money to keep doing what he’s been doing and trying to encourage others.
Good for him, I hope he posts on social media every day that he is not suicidal and keeps clear of “friendly fire”.
We’ll see how long this lasts when they start harassing his family.
As a member of the ACAB brigade, this guy is trying to do what is right. The result is exactly why we say ACAB.
Consider this is about traffic tickets and imagine what this guy’s outcome would be if he found something worse. Like something analogous to the LA sheriff’s department gangs, or the Chicago PD’s secret torture sites. We wouldn’t be reading about a lawsuit that he won.
The part that I have the issue with is the A
Clearly it’s not all cops, as this guy (and others who try to do the right thing but don’t make the news) demonstrates.
Yeah this guy was great. Was. For a little while. Is he a cop anymore?
Probably lol.
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The A is because guys like this can’t last in a system designed to force them out.
I’m having trouble finding the article, but a while back, there was a detective who was investigating cop corruption wind up dead.
This isn’t the case I think I’m thinking of, but here’s one example.
I remember some of the incident you were describing. It was a ‘training’ about hands-on tactics, and he somehow ended up in the group with three or four of the officers he was investigating.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/08/1127580159/houston-tipping-lapd-death-lawsuit
That’s the one.