Former NYPD Trials Commissioner: Latest Scandal ‘Rots Core’

Even as Mayor de Blasio eviscerated two top police commanders as “bad apples” who betrayed their oath of office, a former top NYPD official criticized him for setting an inappropriate tone early in his administration and warned that this was “a tip-of-the-iceberg scandal” that arguably was worse than the corruption uncovered by the Knapp Commission in the early 1970s because those episodes “never rose to the Chiefs of the department.”

Arnold Kriss, an ex-prosecutor who served as the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Trials under Mayor Ed Koch, acknowledged Mr. de Blasio was correct in noting that the corruption uncovered by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office pre-dated his own tenure and that of Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, saying, “It started under his predecessor, [Ray] Kelly.”