NY POLICE COMMANDER INDICTED

NEW YORK (AP) -- A senior police commander was charged with staging an
arrest so he could steal money from a drug dealer, making the officer
the city's highest-ranking to be charged with drug-related corruption.

Dennis Sindone, 39, was suspended without pay Thursday, a day after a
federal grand jury handed up a sealed indictment charging him with
conspiring to violate the drug dealer's civil rights in 1996, while he
was off duty, prosecutors said.

Sindone's attorney, James Culleton, entered an innocent plea for his
client and called the case ``a stretch.''

``He did absolutely nothing wrong,'' Culleton said after Sindone was
released on $50,000 bond.

Sindone, an 18-year veteran, had been promoted to deputy inspector in
April, but after the accusations became public last month, he was
placed on modified assignment, then demoted to captain.

At the time of the alleged theft, Sindone was a sergeant supervising a
drug-homicide task force in the Bronx.

The indictment said he agreed with another officer and a drug dealer
to stage the arrest of a second drug dealer in order to seize an
unspecified amount of money. Newspaper reports put the figure at about
$50,000.

Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said he was ``disappointed in what
we found in the investigation'' but expected no other officers to be
indicted in the case.