Mathew Bianchi took routine traffic stops seriously and handed out tickets regardless of people’s connections within the Police Department. He says he was punished for it.
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The police unions distribute the wallet-sized courtesy cards — sometimes referred to as “get out of jail free” cards — to members, who in turn pass them out to friends and family. Bianchi had been instructed to let card carriers off without a ticket.
By the time he pulled over the Mazda in November 2018, drivers were handing Bianchi these cards six or seven times a day. But this woman’s card was a little older, a little tattered-looking. It was difficult to make out the contact information of the officer who had given it to her, which is usually written on the card’s back. So Bianchi did the wrong thing, which is to say, the right thing: He wrote the woman a ticket.
Though Bianchi didn’t know it then, he had just begun what would become a yearslong struggle to do the job the way he thought it should be done. He had inherited his moral obligations — and a strong dose of stubbornness — from his grandmother, who raised him on Staten Island. But he had no family in the Police Department, and no one who could tell him what to do when its leadership began to turn against him.
The month after he stopped the Mazda, a high-ranking police union official, Albert Acierno, got in touch. He told Bianchi that the cards were inviolable. He then delivered what Bianchi came to think of as the “brother speech,” saying that cops are brothers and must help each other out. That the cards were symbols of the bonds between the police and their extended family and friends.
The issue is that the people who have them tend to want nothing more in life than to suck on the thin blue line and they protect it like it is their emotional support assault rifle. Well, actually, they protect it a lot more since they tend to not flash it in every park and 7-11 they can find.
But once you know what they look like in that jurisdiction (or a nearby one)? Yeah, they are trivial to fake. But it only works if you look like you are middle/upper class white.
Back in high school we allegedly stole the wallet of the rapist football player, stole his card (and his money), and made a bunch of fakes. Worked well until a Korean girl got her mom’s car completely fucked up by an angry cop. She wold have gotten a drug charge from the baggy they tried to plant but this was right around the time camera phones were becoming a thing and they didn’t realize how worthless the 20 seconds of video on those things were.