Bringing you news, stories & photos of our favorite weed

Growin' Our Own (page 4)

Arrests Jolt the Police, but Some See a Pattern

By: Shaila K. Dewan and William K. Rashbaum (NY Times)

The rough outlines of their profiles fit the model of many protagonists in corruption stories: the well-regarded family men whose arrests on charges of stealing from drug dealers simply do not compute with those who know them.

One, a retired detective, was a basketball coach at a local church who doted on his young sons. The other, an 18-year veteran of the police force, convened block association meetings in his home and helped root out drug dealers from his street.

But no matter how familiar the plot line, the accusations that these men abused their authority can still deliver a jolt to neighbors, fellow police officers and the public.

"These things always happen," one police captain said. "But it always shocks me."

The two men, Thomas Rachko and Julio C. Vasquez, both detectives with long and, at least on paper, distinguished careers, are accused of robbing a drug courier of $169,000 on November 26, 2003.

Prosecutors and the police are investigating whether Mr. Vasquez is connected to the killing, one day earlier, of a man who investigators say had been the pair's drug informant, several law enforcement officials said. And, in just a few days of debriefing, investigators say, Mr. Rachko has begun to tell the department's Internal Affairs Bureau and prosecutors of the range and depth of their wrongdoing and how, over perhaps half a dozen years, it involved others on the force. The money has not been recovered.

"Everybody's got a good reputation until they get caught," one senior police official said. At least some aspects of the charges were "so off the charts," the official said, that he suspected they would prove to be true. "It's so bizarre that no one could make it up."

Officials say the case against the two men is strong - the entire robbery was captured on videotape - but it has barely begun to wend its way through the court system. Their story, nonetheless, already has echoes of others that have preceded it: the temptation of proximity to drugs and drug profits, the bravado of those shielded by the inherent credibility of their office, the intertwining of skill and risk. All of these aspects have come into play in corruption scandals over the years, like the robbing of drug dealers and routine perjury by officers in the 30th Precinct in Harlem - the Dirty 30 - a decade ago.

The shock of such scandals is always, it seems, counterweighed by a grim understanding of the realities of police work, particularly when high-volume drug dealers are the quarry.

"You're dealing with the worst elements of society. Can you maintain the same innocence as when you joined the police, or are you somehow influenced?" asked Maki Haberfeld, the chairwoman of law, police science and criminal justice administration at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who has studied police corruption in 15 countries. "There are a lot of elements that if you pull them together, it's a wonder that we don't have more corrupted cops."

Mr. Rachko and Mr. Vasquez began working together, investigators say, when both were assigned to an ambitious new narcotics unit, the Northern Manhattan Initiative, in 1996. The two men were, on one level, a mismatched pair: Mr. Rachko, a hulking, 6-foot-3 investigator, and Mr. Vasquez, a compact undercover officer who had studied martial arts.

But they also had much in common: each had two young sons and both had become officers in their early 20's. And although they both ascended to the rank of second-grade detective - a select group that numbers about 800 in a department of 37,000, with a base salary of more than $65,000 - both had come under scrutiny before, in ways that foreshadowed their current troubles.

Thomas Rachko spent his early childhood in Upper Manhattan, and moved across the Harlem River to Marble Hill when he was 10. "He was sort of that last generation of whites that grew up in Washington Heights," said Anthony Ricco, a defense lawyer who encountered Mr. Rachko several times in court. "So he is street-smart. He knows the streets, he knows the kids."

Mr. Rachko, 45, went to John F. Kennedy High School, but did not graduate, and joined the Navy for a four-year stint in 1976, his lawyer, David Goldstein, said. He retired from the department last year and now lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, in the same apartment complex as his wife, from whom he is separated, and their two sons, ages 8 and 11.

Mr. Vasquez, 43, and his wife, a vice president at HSBC bank, own a home on the fringe of Park Slope, in Brooklyn. Together, they have four children, including two teenage boys whom Mr. Vasquez lists as dependents in court papers.

Mr. Vasquez joined the Police Department in 1985, when he was 24, and within three years was assigned to narcotics. At some point, investigators said, there was an allegation that he had protected family members accused of dealing drugs, but it was unsubstantiated.

He was also sued by Domingo Morel, who charged that Mr. Vasquez, in plainclothes, assaulted him in March 1997, thinking he was carrying drugs. No drugs were found on Mr. Morel, who was given a disorderly conduct summons and left the station house with what he said was a back injury, Mr. Vasquez said in a deposition that he had been tipped off to a drug delivery and that Mr. Morel was carrying a bag. The case has yet to go to trial.

In 1982, Mr. Rachko, then 23, joined the Housing Police, which later merged with the department. While working the city's housing projects, he came under scrutiny during a corruption investigation that bears striking similarities to the current case. The case, people who worked on it say, centered on a group of officers suspected of robbing drug dealers. Two housing officers were eventually arrested and convicted after they stole two kilograms of cocaine from an undercover detective in a sting operation.

The investigation included allegations that as many as five other officers had participated in the scheme, and several people involved in the investigation said that Mr. Rachko, nicknamed Mad Dog, and several others had long been at the center of a swirl of allegations. "He was always under suspicion, even before that case," one said.

But investigators said they were never able to collect enough evidence to charge Mr. Rachko. In a way, his skills as an anticrime officer contributed to the suspicion surrounding him. "Tommy was a great street cop," said one former housing officer who worked with Mr. Rachko in East Harlem. But he added that sometimes it seemed as if Mr. Rachko blended into the criminal world too well.

Dangers and Temptations At the Northern Manhattan Initiative, the two men joined an exciting but perilous unit. Supervisors and detectives in the unit were picked from narcotics units throughout the city in an attempt to take down what the authorities called the cocaine hub of the region: the northernmost three precincts in Manhattan, with an estimated 5,000 dealers and 150 organizations.

The work was challenging, particularly for undercover investigators who ventured alone into crack dens, where they were sometimes forced, at gunpoint, to ingest drugs themselves. Northern Manhattan also offered the hazard of temptation: bricks of cocaine and piles of cash.

Philip Karasyk, a lawyer who until Thursday represented Mr. Vasquez, would not discuss the case, but speaking in general terms said that narcotics work is particularly tough on detectives, even though few succumb. "It's probably the most hands-on law enforcement job there is on a regular basis," he said. "They're dealing with some of the most unsavory and vicious criminals there are, people who face long jail time if they're caught selling drugs. Couple that with, they're dealing with large sums of cash and a commodity that is easily convertible to large sums of cash.

"And, after a while, to become effective at what they do, they almost have to assume the identity and mentality of a drug dealer."

There is no consensus on how well Mr. Rachko and Mr. Vasquez performed in the unit. Some who worked with them said they did well, taking in large seizures. Mr. Vasquez was ultimately promoted to a more elite team, the Firearms Investigation Unit. But one senior official who worked in narcotics when they were assigned there called them "marginal, at best."

It is not clear how the two came to work together, but experts on police corruption say that bad police officers tend to find each other by reputation. Often, there is a ringleader, one who gingerly tests colleagues before including them in a scheme.

William Burmeister, the former head of the official corruption unit for the Manhattan district attorney, said that each incident of corruption involves a risk assessment on the part of the officers involved.

"Given an opportunity, people make decisions, and one of the factors in the decision is, 'Who am I with, and do I trust this person?' " Mr. Burmeister said. "Rarely do they take chances with someone who they don't trust. What is being alleged here clearly is an existing relationship where these guys were clearly beyond the pale and looking for opportunities."

Puzzling Over a Motive

Many officers marvel that their colleagues would risk so much for easy cash.

In the case of Mr. Rachko and Mr. Vasquez, the only hint of a motive lies in the fact that after his arrest, Mr. Rachko was ordered by a state judge to get counseling for a gambling problem. But several people interviewed about Mr. Rachko said he never talked about casinos or bookmaking, and friends of both men say they were not ostentatious spenders.

"He has got a PT Cruiser, for God's sake," said David McIntyre, one of Mr. Rachko's fellow coaches.

Mr. Burmeister and other investigators say they have heard corrupt officers justify their actions in any number of ways, by claiming that they had seen others do far worse or arguing that the money was dirty anyway.

"This is a culture that is created over the years, that it's O.K. to take things," Professor Haberfeld said. "They feel they don't get enough respect from the public, they don't get enough respect from their supervisors, which also contributes to a kind of cynical approach to what's right and wrong."

However they may have begun, Mr. Rachko and Mr. Vasquez ended, according to criminal complaints and a police video, wearing police raid jackets and using a department car to rob a drug courier who had tipped them off that he would be making a delivery of $169,000. Mr. Vasquez was on duty at the time, the complaints say.

Unknown to the three, who investigators say planned to share the money, the courier was under surveillance by another law enforcement task force.

Known as Good Neighbors

The news sent shock waves throughout Mr. Vasquez's gun unit and the Police Department, and finally, after it was made public in newspapers, through the two men's communities. Neighbors of Mr. Vasquez in Park Slope said they were surprised that such a friendly, generous couple could be in such trouble. Mr. Vasquez and his wife threw Christmas parties and organized block parties.

"They are tireless in pushing to make the block a better place," said Ted Joyce, who lives down the street. His wife, the president of the block association, burst into tears and left the room.

Mr. Rachko, out on bail, walked last Wednesday into St. Margaret of Cortona Roman Catholic Church, where he attends Mass, and resigned his position as assistant basketball coach. Since the news of his arrest broke early this month, parents had been complaining, the pastor said.

Coaching, friends said, was one of the most important things in the life of Mr. Rachko, who unlike most cops did not start a new career after he retired. So routine is his attendance at Little League and basketball games that in hours between the time the robbery is alleged to have taken place and later that evening, when Mr. Rachko was arrested, he took his sons to a sports event, his lawyer said at his arraignment.

For Mr. Vasquez, his arrest meant the end of his career; he resigned two weeks ago. For investigators, the arrests are just the beginning. Mr. Rachko, officials say, has implicated two other detectives and a retired lieutenant, causing a new round of astonishment among department veterans. The lieutenant, who has not been charged, attended an Ivy League college and was a high school teacher before joining the force, people who know him say.

Both men pleaded not guilty recently at their arraignments in state court. Lawyers for both Mr. Vasquez and Mr. Rachko declined to discuss the case.

As for whether more serious crimes are involved, investigators have not determined whether Mr. Vasquez was linked to the killing of Miguel Peralta, who they believe was an informant of the two men and was found dead on Tuesday, Nov. 25, the day before the robbery. Mr. Vasquez and Mr. Rachko face state charges of grand larceny and other offenses, and federal charges of lying to a federal agent. The investigation is continuing, and prosecutors could add charges.

As of now, no one is sure how far the arms of this scandal could reach. But three decades of similar cases have taught the Police Department one thing: It is too early to rule out the worst.

Click here for more Growin' Our Own.