Four NYPD traffic agents were caught on the wrong side of the law yesterday – after they were busted writing dozens of phony tickets, police said.
Investigators with the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau caught the agents – Davey Griffin, 30, Raheem King, 26, Julian Fisher, 24, and Gregory Baird, 56 – allegedly writing tickets for parked vehicles hours after spotting an infraction, to cover up for the fact they were eating lunch or sitting in their cars rather than actually working.
Some tickets were issued to cars that were not illegally parked.
The agents “were on extended meal periods. They were in uniform. They were on foot. They stayed in one place. They didn’t do their jobs,” said IAB Chief Charles Campisi.
He said the men acted out of pure laziness.
“They have to show they’re going out and working. They would go and hide and fool their supervisors that they were working all day,” Campisi said.
The investigation began in late June, after several motorists complained about fake tickets. Campisi said a quick review of records showed disturbing “trends” and “patterns” and an inordinate number of handwritten tickets for out-of-state vehicles.
Typically, agents create tickets by scanning the bar code on a car’s registration with a handheld computer, leaving a printout on the windshield. The data is later uploaded into a central computer. But tickets for out-of-state vehicles, which don’t have New York bar codes, must be handwritten.
Investigators followed the four agents around on June 21, and spotted them jotting down license-plate numbers – usually at the beginning of their shift – but not actually writing the tickets until much later, when they were lazing about in their cars or in restaurants eating, the probers said. But the time code on the filed paperwork would make it appear as if they were working through their entire shifts.
In some instances, the men appeared to write tickets for “phantom vehicles” – cars they never observed at all. In other cases, they filed summons-refusal forms – which are used when a car owner drives off before a ticket has been completed.
In all that day, investigators spotted the men giving out 46 bogus tickets: Griffin allegedly issued 17 false summonses, King 19 summonses and Fisher six summonses in Washington Heights. Baird was seen allegedly writing four phony tickets in Midtown.
“We have asked the Department of Finance to vacate all of those summonses,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
He added that people who suspect they were victims of the scheme call 311.
All four men were charged with numerous counts of forgery, falsifying business records, official misconduct and offering a false instrument.