He doesn’t care what anyone says: Quotas — and stop-and-frisk — work.
A scandal-scarred NYPD official yesterday defended his past use of quotas, saying his demand that cops produce 10 summonses, one arrest and “two good stops” a month was needed to fight crime in East New York.
Deputy Chief Michael Marino testified at the “stop-and-frisk” trial that there was enough suspicious activity in Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct when he took over in 2002 that his requirement could easily be met in a single day.
But Marino said a review of monthly reports revealed that the precinct’s cops had adopted “their own quotas” and were each issuing a mere five summonses a month.
“It kind of indicated they were driving by things and not addressing them,” he testified in Manhattan federal court. “It was almost malfeasance to me.”
In 2006, an arbitrator ruled that Marino’s quota violated state labor law — but Marino noted that none of the disciplines he imposed were ever reversed.
Marino, now second-in-command on Staten Island, also said he wouldn’t impose quotas again, due to a 2010 change in the law.
At the start of Marino’s testimony, Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that he couldn’t be asked about his 2011 suspension for abusing human-growth hormone because it wasn’t relevant to the case.
But the attempt to question him led to an explosion of anger from the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jonathan Moore, who accused a city lawyer of insulting him for raising the subject.
During a break in the proceedings, Moore stuck his finger in the face of city lawyer Judson Vickers, screaming: “Don’t you say that to me in court! You called me a scumbag! You said I give the profession a bad name! You give the profession a bad name!”
Vickers denied bad-mouthing Moore, insisting: “All I said was I didn’t appreciate what he said to the witness at the beginning. I thought that was not professional.”