A Port Authority police lieutenant who officials believe is the niece of Rep. Charles Rangel helped spring a trio of suspected pot smugglers from jail — just a month after trying to get a mentally ill, gun-toting Navy castoff on a flight out of JFK, The Post has learned.
The Internal Affairs unit has now opened a second probe into Lt. Coretta Smith, a 15-year veteran who sources said came to the rescue of the suspects. They had been pulled over on the George Washington Bridge with stacks of cash in a car wreaking of marijuana.
Smith has so far been spared serious charges from the airport shenanigans. Insiders believe she is getting lenient treatment because of her high-powered uncle, who has great influence over federal grants to the agency as dean of the New York congressional delegation, the sources said.
Rangel did not return calls.
Smith stepped back into hot water Monday, when PA cops stopped a 2003 Buick on the New Jersey side of the bridge after they suspected its driver was intoxicated.
“I smoked a joint,” the driver, Robert Timmons, 27, allegedly admitted to PA Police Officer Leonel Gonzalez.
A police dog smelled pot in a woman’s purse. It contained several bundles of cash with “a strong odor of marijuana all over the money,” according to a police report, and there was also pot residue in the car.
The officers took Timmons, of Paterson, NJ, and his passengers, Tyre Gyasi, 19, also of Paterson, and a girl, 17, into custody.
Smith, who had been assigned to a Port Authority station house in New Jersey that evening, got involved.
For reasons that remain unclear, she refused the request by Gonzalez, the arresting officer, to alert the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.
“That’s not your call. It’s the lieutenant’s job, and I am not doing that,” Smith said, according to sources.
She also refused to authorize a criminal history check of the trio, sources said.
“They could have given the names Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse, and they would have been let go,” said one law-enforcement source.
Timmons was given the equivalent of a summons for three offenses, including driving under the influence of narcotics.
Gyasi was going to be released on another minor charge. But he was detained after cops gave him a document to acknowledge the summons, and he stupidly told them: “I don’t know why I’m signing this. I’m not going to show up in court.”
A judge was summoned to the station when the police decided to hit him with a more serious charge. But Gyasi was able to post $2,500 in cash bail — using some of the pot-reeking money that had been seized and even signing the bail receipt with an alias, sources said.
Timmons turned out to be a “predicate felon” who served a collective 70 months in jail for drugs and weapons convictions.
Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said the department’s internal affairs unit was investigating.
The incident occurred two weeks after The Post reported that Smith intervened in an earlier case. That time, a Navy sailor, about to be discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder, was prevented from getting on a plane to Guyana with two guns and nearly 500 rounds of ammo.
Smith allegedly ordered the sailor be released. Two days later, she brought him back to Kennedy Airport and tried to get him aboard another flight but was stopped by her subordinates.
Efforts to reach Smith were unsuccessful.