An NYPD officer admitted in court that he and fellow officers planted drugs to arrest innocent people.
Stephen Anderson said that he left cocaine near four men in a Queens bar to help another officer meet arrest quotas.
“It was something I was seeing a lot of, whether it was from supervisors or undercovers and even investigators,” he told the judge.
Members of the Drug Policy Alliance said this is not news to them – they have heard of Brooklyn narcotics teams doing this for a while.
“One of the consequences of the war on drugs is that police officers are pressured to make large numbers of arrests, and it’s easy for some of the less honest cops to plant evidence on innocent people,” Gabriel Sayegh said.
Neill Franklin, from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said that police departments all over struggle with cops planting evidence.
Many of these officers believe they are getting the “bad” guy off the streets, he told Metro.
“They fail to recognize that they are in fact worse than any bad guy they arrest.”
