Page 6 of Witness 8

‘If you want my advice, we fight. You won’t do time with this deal, but you’ll be a convicted felon. That brings a ton of shit that you have to carry around. You can’t ever legally possess a firearm, you won’t get a loan or credit card, you won’t get a mortgage, you’ll lose your driver’s license and that’s just the beginning.’

He nodded, said, ‘I hear you, man, but this white judge is never going to believe that license plate was clean. Not when there’s two white cops saying my plate was dirty.’

‘I agree,’ I said.

‘You what?’

‘You’re right. He won’t believe you over two white cops.’

‘So why are we fighting this?’

‘Because I’m not going to call you as a witness to testify that your license plate was clean. We’re going to get one of the cops to do it for us.’

Jayden looked at me like I’d just told him I’d bought the Brooklyn Bridge for a nickel.

I asked him to trust me. He nodded.

‘Mr. Baker, Mr. Flynn,’ said the judge. ‘Are you ready to proceed?’

‘I am, Your Honor, Mr. Baker has agreed to call Officer Ben Gray to speak to the single issue in this case. I will have questions for the officer afterwards.’

‘Proceed,’ said Judge Hightower.

The tall cop in the new sergeant’s stripes came forward, took the oath, sat down and gave fast, clean answers to Baker’s questions. Gray and his partner were on the night shift, they saw a Lexus drive past with mud on the license plate, obscuring the lettering. They stopped the car, informed the driver why he’d been pulled over. Got his license and registration and ran a check on both.

‘During the stop, Sergeant Gray, was there anything else suspicious about Mr. Carter or his vehicle?’ asked Baker.

‘Yes, I could smell marijuana. It was a pungent smell coming out of the car. While it’s legal to carry it for personal use, I suspected, given how strong the smell was, that there may be a large quantity of marijuana in the vehicle – enough for illegal distribution of narcotics.’

Since the legalization of marijuana, cops looking for an excuse to search a vehicle will either say they thought they saw a gun on the back seat, or say they caught an immensely strong smell of dope from the car. Needless to say, there were no drugs in Jayden’s car. Didn’t matter that they didn’t find any – theydidfind a gun.

‘I see, and having formed a reasonable suspicion, did you then search the vehicle?’

‘We both did. I found the pistol in the glove box. Mr. Carter did not have a license to carry that firearm and he was given his rights and arrested. I called in the arrest, arranged for a truck to tow the defendant’s vehicle.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant Gray. Mr. Flynn will have some questions.’

I could have a dozen questions now. The truth is I already knew exactly what had happened.

Gray and Coffee had made a racially motivated traffic stop. Simple as that. There was no mud on the license plate when they stopped the car, but while Gray talked to Jayden, I guessed his partner could smear all the mud and dirt he wanted onto the license plate. There was no smell of drugs. They were looking for a reason to arrest Jayden. If they hadn’t found a gun, I suspected both cops would’ve gotten physical with him and said Jayden struggled, then he would’ve been arrested for resisting a police officer.

Street cops live and die by their arrest record. They need to keep those numbers high. And what started as racial profiling quickly turned into an opportunity to make some money. There are five tow companies who have contracts with the city. Once the cops arrest a driver at a traffic stop the car can’t be left on the street – it has to be towed. There’s a randomizer on their cruiser’s computer – so once they input that a car needs a tow, the program randomly selects one of the five towing companies. That’s who they’re supposed to call for the tow. Only some cops forget to press the button, or ignore the result. They call their guy in the towing company who will kick back fifty bucks to the cop for the call-out – usually, the same company who keeps a lot in Long Island, or Jamaica, or Bed Stuy, so they can charge the extra mileage for towing and are likely to keep the car longer because it will make it hard for the owner to get a ride out there.

Greenbacks and kickbacks.

Even those sergeant’s stripes.

The officers who are under investigation, or have a large number of citizen complaints against them, normally get a promotion instead of booted off the force. The police commission and the union don’t want cops prosecuted nor any successful complaints from the public, because they hate copsgetting fired. Gives the boys in blue a bad name. Instead, it’s easier to take problematic cops off the street by putting them behind a sergeant’s desk. A rotten NYPD cop is far more likely to get a promotion, and the pay rise and pension benefits that come with it, than get fired.

I wasn’t going to ask Sergeant Gray about any of this. Not the complaints against him, not the promotion.

I was going to focus on the illegal stop and tow.

I had no proof of any of Gray’s criminal activity, other than his promotion, and the fact that on the face of it this was a slam dunk case for a prosecutor, but Baker didn’t want to be in court. He was offering me the shirt off his back just to plead this case out.

I guessed he suspected I knew what had really happened.

And theyknewI must’ve had a good reason to throw away the plea deal of a lifetime. Baker suspected I had evidence that would blow them away.