Something bizarre happened a few weeks ago, when a veteran police and court reporter examined a court filing involving Stefon Luckey.
John Marzulli of the Daily News recognized Luckey’s name. Luckey had appeared before the Civilian Complaint Review Board last year, when his lawyer, Philip Hines, presented claims against the NYPD. Hines said cops had beaten his client and that Sgt. Jared Hospedales had improperly pepper-sprayed him after a confrontation in a St. Albans grocery store in 2013.
The CCRB, an independent agency that mediates and investigates complaints against police, substantiated Luckey’s complaint against Hospedales, then prosecuted him in the NYPD trial room, where he was found guilty.
Marzulli saw in Luckey’s court filing that he had dropped Hines as his lawyer and hired the firm of CCRB chairman Richard Emery and was now suing the city.
That’s right. The chairman of the CCRB, which prosecuted the sergeant, heads the law firm representing the sergeant’s victim in a suit against the city.
That is known as a conflict of interest, which is why the city has a Conflicts of Interest Board, although it is invariably ineffective. (An exception occurred in 2000 when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. The board rebuked then-Commisioner Howard Safir for accepting a trip for himself and his wife from Revlon Corp. to the 1999 Oscars. Safir had to repay the trip’s $7,000 cost.)
Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the board saw no conflict in Emery’s actions, and it issued a waiver so that his firm could represent Luckey, an emergency medical technician. De Blasio has said nothing publicly about the matter, other than to criticize Emery for using the term “pig” when referring to police unions calling for his ouster from the CCRB.
Indeed, de Blasio is indebted to Emery, who did what the mayor wanted. Unlike in the Bloomberg administration, in which then-Commissioner Ray Kelly did what he wanted and ignored the CCRB, Emery has not hesitated to go after cops. (In full disclosure, Emery’s firm represented me in 2006, when I testified at a post-trial hearing involving convicted killer Michael Skakel and the murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Conn.)
After Marzulli wrote about Emery’s conflict, Emery’s firm withdrew from Luckey’s case. Meanwhile, the police unions are howling for Emery’s resignation. In so doing, they’re putting Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who also has said nothing publicly about the Emery matter, in somewhat of a bind. Bratton hired Emery’s son, a recent Ivy League grad, to work as a civilian analyst in the Intelligence Division and Counter-Terrorism Bureau.
Emery has said neither he nor his firm would represent a client whose complaint is substantiated by the CCRB. Asked whether they would give up all clients whose cases were heard by the CCRB, whether or not their claims were substantiated, he emailed, “All while I am Chair.” He added: “Though we are not required to do that.”
