A Bronx grand jury probing a massive police ticket-fixing scandal has voted to indict five civilians in addition to 17 cops for a host of wide-ranging charges, according to sources close to the case.
One of the civilians is a suspected drug dealer linked through wiretaps to a police officer in the Bronx’s 40th Precinct.
Another civilian is also thought to be in the drug trade, sources said. The three other civilians were caught doling out favors, financial and otherwise, to cops fingered in the ticket-fixing scandal.
The panel, which voted on the indictments between Tuesday and Friday, has yet to officially hand up the bills, sources said. But those could those could come as early next week.
“It was a deliberate process,” said a source involved in the case. “They heard a tremendous amount of evidence. It’s one of the more prolonged processes you’ll see in a grand jury.”
The grand jury has been hearing evidence in the case for six months.
The charges range from official misconduct to grand larceny, and stem from a two-year investigation by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which was initially looking into a single officer’s relationship with a known drug dealer. Wiretaps subsequently revealed the ticket-fixing, as well as other violations.
Ten union officials, most from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, are expected to face the grand jury’s indictments, once the panel officially unseals them.
The indictments will likely include hundreds of individual charges lodged against the 22 people named in the case, sources said.
The Daily News reported last week that the grand jury was poised to indict 17 NYPD officers. Now, sources say, the voting is complete.
“We haven’t seen a case this big in a long, long time,” said a source. “A lot of cops will be in court very soon.”
(Source: NY Daily News)