Brooklyn Detective Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People

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Brooklyn Detective Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People
By TIM STELLOH
Published: November 1, 2011


The New York Police Department, already saddled with corruption scandals, saw its image further tainted on Tuesday with the conviction of a police detective for planting drugs on a woman and her boyfriend.
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The bench verdict from Justice Gustin L. Reichbach in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn stemmed from incidents committed in 2007 by the defendant, Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year Police Department veteran.

But the case against Detective Arbeeny was rooted in a far larger tale of corruption in Police Department drug units: Several narcotics officers in Brooklyn have been caught mishandling drugs they seized as evidence, and hundreds of potentially tainted drug cases have been dismissed. The city has made payments to settle civil suits over wrongful incarcerations.

During the trial, prosecutors described the corruption within the Police Department drug units that Detective Arbeeny worked for; one former detective, who did not know the defendant, testified that officers in those units often planted drugs on innocent people. That former detective, Stephen Anderson, has pleaded guilty to official misconduct over a 2008 episode involving drug evidence and now faces two years to four years in prison.

The conviction of Detective Arbeeny on charges of falsifying business records, official misconduct and offering a false instrument for filing, was merely the latest example of police corruption, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 25, 2007, prosecutors said Detective Arbeeny planted a small bag of crack cocaine on two innocent people.

The detective’s lawyer, Michael Elbaz, tried to discredit the most important prosecution witnesses, Yvelisse DeLeon and her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa. Ms. DeLeon had testified that the couple drove up to their apartment building in Coney Island and were approached by two plainclothes police officers. She said she then saw Detective Arbeeny remove a bag of powder from his pocket and place it in the vehicle.

“He brought out his pocket,” Ms. DeLeon told the court. “He said, ‘Look what I find.’ It looked like little powder in a little bag.”

Later in 2007, the detective was accused of stealing multiple bags of cocaine from the prisoner van he had been assigned to; Justice Reichbach found Detective Arbeeny not guilty of those charges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/ny...nt-people.html