New York Daily News – by DAREH GREGORIAN
A corrupt former cop whose dirty dealings led to a massive ticket fixing investigation into the NYPD was sentenced to prison Wednesday — despite his lawyer’s “he didn’t choke anybody” defense.
“You have utterly disgraced your badge and your uniform,” Bronx Supreme Court Justice Michael Gross told now ex-NYPD officer Jose Ramos as he sentenced him to 12 and a half to 14 and a half years behind bars on attempted robbery and drug charges.
Ramos’ lawyer, Matthew Kluger, contended his client had once been a good cop, and said he hadn’t hurt anyone.
“He wasn’t choking people. He wasn’t shooting people,” Kluger said, referring to the choking death of Eric Garner and the shooting death of Akai Gurley.
But prosecutor Omer Wiczyk said the 17-year veteran had “tarnished every one” of his thousands of colleagues who do their jobs honestly and heroically, and has contributed to the “lack of trust” some people have in the police department.
“I’m not saying he’s solely responsible for that lack of trust, but let’s be honest — he didn’t help,” Wiczyk said.
Internal Affairs started investigating the 40th Precinct cop back in 2008, after getting a tip that he’d been running two barber shops in the borough and that his best friend, a convicted felon, was selling “pounds and pounds of marijuana out of them.”
He’d also let the dealer use his NYPD parking placard, prosecutors said.
The information checked out — so police put a wiretap on Ramos and ran three controlled integrity tests. “He failed each one,” Wiczyk said.
Those “failures” — including taking money from a drug dealer to drive a van he thought was filled with drugs, robbing a drug dealer’s empty hotel room, and helping another crook swindle somebody out $30,000 — led to the criminal convictions.
“He says because it was criminals he was targeting it was fine, which is ironic because now he’s a criminal himself,” Wiczyk said.
Ramos, dressed in an orange prison uniform, said, “I take full responsibility for my actions.”
“I don’t deny I’ve done wrong,” he said, but “I have not hurt anyone. I would not hurt anyone.”
Prosecutors disagree — Ramos is still awaiting trial on six other indictments, including one for trying to hire a hit man to kill one of the witnesses against him.
Another is for fixing tickets for friends and colleagues — a phenomenon IAB found out about from his wiretapped conversations. The ensuing investigation led to 15 police officers being indicted and hundreds of others being disciplined.
No police officers were in court to support Ramos on Wednesday, and none showed up for him during his trial. He was fired from the NYPD following his conviction in October.
Best Caption for above photo wins nothing ! : ” That muthaFakaa said what ? Wtf am I paying your joo Azz fo Rubenstein !? I’m a fuggin cop we don’t get charged with shit !”
“You have utterly disgraced your badge and your uniform,” Bronx Supreme Court Justice Michael Gross told now ex-NYPD officer Jose Ramos… “you had virtually free reign to terrorize the public at will, with no repercussions, and yet you chose to commit crimes so blatantly obvious that I’m FORCED to sentence you to hard time in a pitiful attempt to preserve the dissipating illusion that there is still a shred of justice left in court system.”
They NEVER tell the whole story, do they.
He fixed tickets and cost the city gun point reva bucks. For that they hang a cop. And a couple of other minor crimes they would have swept under the rug for him. Now they need point out a cop can be convicted. Think back a cop don’t turn in all the gunpoint revenue, or fix’s tickets so every penney can not be got. They get fired and prison every time. Every cop know that. He could have got away with the rest.