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.”
I’m not aware of any headlines stating that. How do you know this is the only corruption they fought?
Seems like he was doing his job professionally and ignoring requests by superiors to give special treatment, all the way to reprisals and getting demoted because he wouldn’t stoop to their corruption… Isn’t that what we want with cops?
ACAB, except the ones actually fighting and fixing this stuff. We need good ones and should encourage them.
Why should we assume he ever did anything other than what we’re told he did. He fought and fixed something because he was personally punished by it.
The cops that fight the corruption that doesn’t affect them don’t stay cops for long.
What are you talking about? He fought against special treatment BEFORE getting reprisals. He was punished after treating people equally, not before.
The settlement was about the reprisals he faced for sticking to his guns and NOT becoming corrupt. You should be mad at the pig in charge who pushed for the demotion, not the guy doing the right thing.