Ticket-fixing scandal: NYPD cops' racist talk caught on wiretap recordings

BY Kevin Deutsch
NY Daily News
Sep. 27, 2011

It's more than ticket-fixing chatter investigators caught on their wiretaps: Cops are also heard talking trash about the people they're paid to protect, sources said.

The wiretap recordings at the heart of the probe captured conversations rife with racist and inflammatory remarks, sources told the Daily News.

"There's overtly racist language," said one source. "And it gets a lot worse than that."

The shocking language could cause the scandal to spiral far beyond the 17 cops already indicted, tainting cases of hundreds of officers caught on tape, legal experts said.

"If a Bronx jury hears a cop call someone a n----r or an animal, everything else they say goes out the window," said one veteran defense lawyer with a client who was arrested by a cop implicated in the scandal.
[...]
Prosecutors have worked feverishly to keep transcripts of the wiretapped calls from being made public, sources said.

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