For the second time, the ongoing ticket-fixing scandal that has rocked the NYPD is being used in court to try and discredit the police. In this case the scandal has been deployed in a four-year-old DWI case in the Bronx where both the arresting officer and an officer who gave the accused a breathalyzer test have been implicated in the scandal.
The ongoing probe into more than 400 officers emerged in a drunk driving case this week in which ex-Bronx prosecutor Stephen Lopresti is accused of crashing a minivan on the Grand Concourse in December 2006. To try and downplay the defense's expected strategy in the case, prosecutors quickly turned their questioning of arresting officer Julissa Goris to the scandal after reviewing her role in the arrest. When asked if she'd ever had a ticket fixed, Goris responded in the affirmative, telling the court that she had done so once successfully for her mother and another time she'd tried to fix a summons for her boyfriend's cousin—but she said she didn't know how that turned out (the DA assured her she would not be charged if she told the truth).
As for how she knew that Lopresti was drunk, Goris nonchalantly told the court "I've arrested people for drunk driving before." Meanwhile officer Harrington Marshall—who administered a Breathalyzer test to the defendant and can reportedly be heard on a wiretap talking about making a ticket disappear—is expected to take the stand later on in the trial. He, too, is expected to be grilled regarding his role in the ticket-fixing scandal.
In his opening statements, defense lawyer Adam Perlmutter hammered in his argument that the case is invalid since the two cops are untrustworthy, telling the court that “You are going to hear from officers who are corrupt officers. The rules that apply to us don’t apply to them.” And the defense might be on the right track. Last week a man was acquitted of attempted murder thanks to an arresting officer's connection to the ticket-fixing probe.
