Top Official to Investigate Police Conduct

The New York City Police Department has assigned a ranking official to look into a wide array of allegations of misconduct, including charges that crime complaints were ignored or manipulated, in the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn, according to two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation.

The examination is the third inquiry into allegations made by Officer Adrian P. Schoolcraft, 35, who first began reporting problems to the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau in August 2009. The first two investigations led the department to file noncriminal internal charges against five officers in the precinct last week, including its former commander, Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello.

The allegations have been a troubling issue for the department and for Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner. It is unclear why, after reviews by the department’s quality assurance division, which handles lower-level misconduct, and its Internal Affairs Bureau, officials had ordered another inquiry, the two officials said.

Inspector Mauriello was charged with failing to record a grand larceny automobile theft and with impeding the internal investigation. The sergeants and officers were accused of failing to record a robbery complaint.

The latest investigation is being led by Deputy Inspector Daniel Carione, who has been with the department since 1989 and formerly headed the Internal Affairs Bureau in Queens. Inspector Carione has already been reviewing the testimony given by officers in the precinct during the first two inquiries and is “asking the same questions again,” said one of the law enforcement officials.

“He is interviewing police officers and sergeants and the lieutenants assigned to the 81st Precinct,” said the official. “He is doing a broad review of the prior investigations.”

The official said he was also listening to audio recordings of station-house roll calls, and other conversations among precinct leaders, which were secretly made by Officer Schoolcraft, and which raised questions about police behavior, including supervisors imposing what sounded like ticket and arrest quotas on their officers. The department has insisted that it has not used quotas.

One person briefed on the matter said the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau has questioned more than two dozen officers in the precinct, which is anchored in Bedford-Stuyvesant. For the last several months, two officers a week have been questioned under oath on the 12th floor of 1 Police Plaza, the department’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, where the office of the chief of internal affairs is located, the person said.

The person, along with the two officials, agreed to speak only if they were not identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Neither Inspector Carione nor his supervisor was available for comment Thursday evening, according to a detective who answered the phone at the Internal Affairs Bureau. Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, declined to comment.

Officer Schoolcraft has said he was the victim of retaliation after lodging his suspicions with the Internal Affairs Bureau; it was not immediately clear if the new inquiry would review those allegations.

Jon Norinsberg, who is representing Officer Schoolcraft in a $50 million lawsuit against the department, said Internal Affairs has not tried to speak to his client since at least early November, after police forcibly removed him from his apartment on Halloween night and took him to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.