Schoolcraft v. The City Of New York et al

Filing 600

DECLARATION of Alan H Scheiner in Opposition re: 566 FINAL MOTION for Attorney Fees for Levine & Gilbert and Peter J. Gleason, Esq.., 559 MOTION for Attorney Fees , Costs and Disbursements.. Document filed by The City Of New York. (Attachments: # 1 Affidavit Declaration of Alan H Scheiner Previously Filed April 8, 2016, # 2 Exhibit Exhibit A, # 3 Exhibit Ex A-1, # 4 Exhibit Ex A-2, # 5 Exhibit Ex B, # 6 Exhibit Ex C, # 7 Exhibit Ec D, # 8 Exhibit Ex E, # 9 Exhibit Ex F, # 10 Exhibit Ex G, # 11 Supplement Ex H, # 12 Exhibit Ex I, # 13 Exhibit Ex J, # 14 Exhibit Ex K, # 15 Exhibit Ex L, # 16 Exhibit Ex M, # 17 Exhibit Ex N, # 18 Exhibit Ex O, # 19 Exhibit Ex P, # 20 Exhibit Ex Q, # 21 Exhibit Ex R, # 22 Exhibit Ex S, # 23 Exhibit Ex T, # 24 Exhibit Ex U, # 25 Exhibit Ex V, # 26 Exhibit Ex X, # 27 Exhibit Ex Y, # 28 Exhibit Ex Z, # 29 Exhibit Ex AA, # 30 Exhibit Ex BB, # 31 Exhibit Ex CC, # 32 Exhibit Ex DD)(Scheiner, Alan)

EXHIBIT BB

The Schoolcraft Problems

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http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2012/121112.html

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The Schoolcraft Problems

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http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2012/121112.html

The Schoolcraft Problems
November 12, 2012
Whistle-blower cop Adrian Schoolcraft and his father
Larry want to bring the world down. In the process,
their supporters fear they are losing focus and hurting
themselves.
Last Saturday, Larry Schoolcraft called this reporter to
say that Adrian — who came to prominence after
police forcibly took him from his apartment to Jamaica
Hospital, where he was held in a psychiatric ward for
six days against his will — has fired the lawyer who
has represented Adrian since the hospital incident.
“He doesn’t tell us anything. He makes deals behind
our backs,” Larry Schoolcraft, said of Manhattan
attorney Jon Norinsberg, who has represented Adrian
since 2010 and filed a $50 million federal lawsuit
against the city. “We need a leader. We need an
architect.”
Norinsberg said: “The father wants us to go after Kelly
[Police Commissioner Ray Kelly], Bloomberg [Mayor
Michael Bloomberg], the FBI, everyone under the sun.
We’ve had a complete communications breakdown.
“This comes completely out of the blue. Adrian has
stayed in my house and we’ve never had a bad word.
Until I hear otherwise from Adrian, I’m still representing
him.”
Norinsberg added that the Schoolcrafts’ behavior has
become increasingly bizarre. “They have disappeared
three times in the last six months. We literally had to
have [Frank] Serpico involved to track them down.”
Norinsberg has handled the case in the traditional legal
manner — through the courts, a process that can take
years, even decades, to resolve.
Norinsberg’s lawsuit charges that Adrian’s forced
hospitalization was NYPD retaliation for his allegations
that supervisors at the 81st precinct in Brooklyn, where
he worked, ordered cops to downgrade crime
statistics from felonies to misdemeanors so that city
would appear safer than it actually was.

Father and son have left the city and moved upstate.
Larry Schoolcraft said they feared for their safety in
New York. They now have no income. They live in a
house with four dogs, a cat and an electric heater.
People in contact with them say they are sometimes at
odds with each other.
Serpico — who in the early 1970s exposed the
department’s pervasive and systemic corruption and
who since has become an iconic figure and inspiration
for people like Adrian — said in a telephone interview:
“The department wants to undermine all that they
stand for by painting them as malcontents, nuts,
psychos. The danger for Adrian is that his message
may be lost and the department let off the hook.”
That is exactly the situation Serpico faced 42 years
ago. Former New York Times city editor Arthur Gelb
recently wrote in the Times that then Mayor John
Lindsay had called the Times’s publisher then, urging
the Times to ignore Serpico’s allegations against the
police department and calling him “bizarre.” The
Times’s police bureau chief, David Burnham, knew
better. The Times’s reporting of Serpico’s claims on its
front page led Lindsay to appoint the Knapp
Commission on police corruption. As a result, the
NYPD’s systemic and pervasive corruption was ended.
Corruption, of course, still exists, but on a far smaller
scale.
Larry Schoolcraft says he and Adrian want a more
media-driven, public airing than is now occurring.
Last week Larry called to say that Adrian was
preparing to replace Norinsberg with attorneys from
the New York Civil Liberties Union. Chris Dunn, the
NYCLU’s Associate Legal Director declined comment.
Larry Schoolcraft added that he had arranged a
meeting with NYCLU attorneys, a reporter from the
Village Voice, another from the Times and the Times’s
general counsel.
A person familiar with that claim said, “Larry tried to
set up a meeting like that a month or so ago. Nobody
was interested.”

Hospitalizing him, the suit alleges, was part of an
NYPD plan to harass, intimidate him, and make him
appear unstable to undercut his allegations.

EXPLOITING THE DEAD. Leave it to politicians and
public officials to plug themselves and their causes,
even at a funeral.

The NYPD subsequently confirmed Adrian’s
allegations: specifically that commanders in the 81st
precinct did doctor crime statistics. The department
has transferred and/or brought departmental charges
against five 81st precinct supervisors, including the
precinct’s commanding officer, a deputy Inspector.

Speaking at the funeral of police officer Artur Kasprzak
, who was electrocuted in his home while saving his
family during Hurricane Sandy, Police Commissioner
Kelly stated that Kasprzak had been “fighting
terrorism” — a cause nearest and dearest to Kelly.

Meanwhile criminologists John Eterno and Eli
Silverman have alleged that downgrading of crimes is
not confined to the 81st precinct but is city-wide, an
allegation first made by the heads of the heads of the
Patrolmen’s and Sergeants’ unions five years before.

For all Kasprzak’s virtues, he was a beat cop in the
First Precinct, who was fighting street crime, not
terrorism .
Meanwhile Mayor Bloomberg, who, like Kelly, invited
himself to the funeral, said of Kasprzak: “Officers like
him are the reason this is the safest big city in

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The Schoolcraft Problems

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http://nypdconfidential.com/columns/2012/121112.html

Amidst a growing furor, Kelly, in January 2011,
announced the appointment of three former federal
prosecutors to serve as members of a Crime
Reporting Review Committee.
“The integrity of our crime reporting system is of the
utmost importance to the Department,” Kelly said in a
well-publicized department news release. “It is
essential not only for maintaining the confidence of the
people we serve, but reliable crime statistics are
necessary for the effective planning and evaluation of
crime reduction strategies. “
Kelly said the committee would complete its work over
the next three to six months.
That was nearly two years ago. The department has
yet to release any crime commission statement or
report. Nor has Kelly responded to questions about the
report or explained the reasons for the delay. Deputy
Commissioner Paul Browne did not respond to an
email on the matter from NYPD Confidential over the
weekend.
Nor has Kelly explained why police officers forced
Schoolcraft from his home and took him to Jamaica
hospital.
Meanwhile, other Schoolcraft allies have expressed
concerns that the Schoolcrafts may be alienating the
very people they need to hold the police department
accountable for their actions against Adrian and the
issues his case has raised.
Nobody denies that whistleblowers can be difficult.
Anyone who singlehandedly takes on a gigantic
organization like the NYPD, as Adrian has, comes
under tremendous psychological and emotional
pressures.

America.”
That claim of being the safest big city is nearest and
dearest to Bloomberg. The fact that it is totally and
irrevocably false hasn’t stopped Mayor Mike from
trumpeting it any chance he gets.
Poor Mayor Mike. Hurricane Sandy seems not only to
have demoralized but to have unhinged him.
Besides telling President Obama to stay away from
New York and making himself appear an insensitive
clod over the New York City Marathon, he is now
having trouble getting his lines right.
His press office put out as Bloomberg’s “as prepared”
remarks, this closing line from his eulogy of Kasprzak:
“May God bless Artur Kasprzak and everyone he
loved. And may God bless and protect the NYPD.”
Either someone switched the words of the speech in
front of him or Mayor Mike misread them because
what he actually said was: “And may God bless and
protect the FDNY.”
EMENDATION: This column of Oct. 29 reported
incorrectly that, after Kelly returned as Police
Commissioner in 2002, he sabotaged former First
Deputy Joe Dunne’s attempt to land a top law
enforcement position with the administration of Gov.
Andrew Cuomo. It was with the administration of then
Attorney General Cuomo.
Edited by Donald Forst

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Copyright © 2012 Leonard Levitt

2/23/2016 10:03 PM