Thanks to the city's illuminating ticket-fixing probe, more details are emerging from a DUI arrest of an NYPD officer last Thanksgiving, as his colleagues allegedly tried to quash the incident, the Daily News reports. Cops found Anthony Rodriguez slumped over the wheel of his illegally parked car in the Bronx with "five open beer bottles" in the car with him. Rodriguez told the arresting officers "I'm a cop. I want a delegate," and refused to submit to a Breathalyzer test. That evening, a sergeant and a union delegate "made calls to borough patrol cops to try and erase" the charge but because Rodriguez was "physically threatening" during the arrest, they refused.
Rodriguez, 27, had previously been arrested last June for instigating a "booze-filled ruckus during a Mets game." His court date for the DUI is June 20. As a grand jury prepares to indict "40 cops this month" for their role in ticket-fixing, the "professional courtesies" that officers gave each other have already affected the outcome of a murder case and another DUI case after the officers involved admitted to fixing tickets on the stand—why wouldn't Rodriguez's lawyer try and similarly discredit his arresting officers?
