The Ticketgate Chronicles #1: That insufferable prick

I had just grabbed my usual decaf iced cappuccino at Dunkin Donuts and was settling into my leather seat in the roving bunker SUV on the way into the office when I got a phone call on my BlackBerry from Charlie, my chief of Internal Affairs. Receiving any sort of direct communication from this guy has become something of a rarity over the years (having entirely lost touch with reality, he thinks he’s some kind of corruption fighting superhero who needs to hide in the shadows all the time), so I knew this would not be a social conversation. I immediately put down my iPad and answered the call.

Charlie proceeded to explain to me in excruciating detail how his ace rat squad cronies had overheard some nonsense about “ticket fixing” while listening in on an unrelated wiretap. I couldn’t believe this guy was wasting my time with something so silly.

“So what’s the big deal, Charlie? Why are you calling me like you just discovered the next Dirty Thirty or Michael Dowd?”

“Uh, well, boss, here’s the thing. We kind of referred this little tidbit to the Bronx D.A.’s office for further investigation. They’ve blown this up into a huge scandal and have dedicated an entire staff of prosecutors to it. They’re also asking us to contribute IAB investigators to the whole affair.”

I was absolutely livid. I kicked the back of the front seat one of my detail detectives was sitting in so hard that he spilled his coffee all over himself. (Oh well, it’s not like he was wearing a bespoke Martin Greenfield suit, so who cares.) I then screamed a few choice words into the phone and hung up. Why do I have so many morons working for me? What kind of idiot refers something like this to the Bronx district attorney? Of all the insufferable pricks in the history of district attorneys, this guy Robert Johnson in the Bronx takes the cake. Like he or his prosecutorial staff of losers has never had a summons taken care of before. What a bunch of hypocrites.

But I must digress. As much as I thought the rats in Internal Affairs royally screwed up, the cat was out of the bag. And as a master of the political arts, the only thing left to do was to orchestrate a little damage control to protect my own reputation. That, of course, meant to fully back the Bronx D.A.’s bogus investigation with the full force of my Internal Affairs Bureau (as the brilliant Sherlock Holmes-ian investigators that they are). As we rolled into One Police Plaza I tossed the rest of my iced cappuccino into some random cop’s face and made myself comfortable in the office with a generous helping of Kool Aid.

I immediately called upon Mordechai, my special projects man, who spent several days rummaging through various city storage facilities to dispose of any evidence that might embarrass important folks such as myself or Mike. I can assert with confidence now that nobody will ever be able to prove that I had a ticket “fixed.” (And, of course, I never knew anything about any ticket fixing going on in this department. I am shocked, disgusted, and deeply outraged by this corrupt practice.)

I then ordered a full work-up of GO-15s and other disciplinary goodies to bestow upon all the losers on patrol who write moving violations. Throwing a couple of working guys and gals under the bus is simply another cost of doing business in the office of the almighty police commissioner, folks!