DRUGS-FOR-INFORMATION SCANDAL SHAKES UP NEW YORK POLICE NARCOTICS FORCE

In the world of urban policing, few relationships are as fraught with
peril as those between narcotics officers and confidential
informants. These informants -- C.I.'s in police parlance -- are
often small-time criminals who are paid or get criminal charges
dropped in return for information about other, theoretically more
dangerous criminals.

Now four police officers in Brooklyn are under arrest in a case that
involves paying informants not with cash or leniency but with the
very drugs they craved, taken from the dealers who were arrested
after the informants pointed them out. Two of the officers were
charged in an internal sting last week after another was caught on a
department audio tape bragging about the practice in September, officials said.

Prosecutors have moved to dismiss more than 80 criminal cases because
the officers caught in the scandal were considered critical to
successful prosecutions, law enforcement officials said, and the
office of the Brooklyn district attorney is analyzing about 100 more
potentially tainted cases.

Three additional officers have been suspended without pay and
stripped of their guns and badges; two others have been placed on
modified assignment -- they lose their guns and badges but still
receive paychecks -- and about a dozen more have been switched to
desk duty. They will be barred from taking enforcement action, like
making drug arrests, until the scope of the wrongdoing is determined,
officials said.

Four high-level supervisors have been transferred, and a new
commander -- Deputy Chief Joseph J. Reznick -- has been brought in to
supervise the department's Narcotics Division.

The concept of using drugs to compensate confidential informants --
mainly people familiar with street culture and criminal habits -- is
not new. Raymond J. Abruzzi, once chief of Brooklyn detectives, who
retired in 1996, said it was illegal but commonplace 30 years ago,
"mainly because the department did not have a lot of money to pay the
informants."

But the continuing corruption investigation offers a striking example
of officers who appeared to have gone too far to make arrests, in a
way that is now aggressively condemned. One law enforcement official
even called it "noble-cause corruption."

"What it looks like to me is that these guys took a shortcut and
shortcuts will get you in trouble and shortcuts will get you in
jail," Mr. Abruzzi said.

"For them to become, in essence, crack dealers, shame on them," Mr.
Abruzzi said. "The question is: 'Were they lazy? Was it an accepted
practice in the unit? And, if so, why would it become accepted?'
Either way it is wrong; it is against the law and it is against our
rules and no matter how you slice it, it is corruption."

The officers caught in the scandal are part of two 10-person
"modules" or teams of officers assigned to the Brooklyn South
narcotics bureau, which is staffed by 260 officers who work under the
umbrella of the Police Department's 1,400-member Narcotics Division.

The arrests were first reported on Tuesday in The Daily News.

Several officials said it appeared to be a case of a handful of
wayward officers in one command -- as opposed to systemic activity
enmeshed in the culture of the department's antinarcotics efforts --
though others may be involved. One official said one or two more
officers may ultimately face criminal charges and others might face suspension.

"Additional suspensions may occur as the investigation proceeds,"
said Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman. He said there
had been "some cooperation from officers assigned to Brooklyn South
in the case," but he declined to elaborate.

At the same time, the case raises questions about supervision of
narcotics officers. Two of those arrested -- Sgt. Michael Arenella,
31, and Officer Jerry Bowens, 31 -- worked on the midnight shift. The
lack of supervision for officers working in the middle of the night,
who are often the least experienced in the department, has been in
the past a chief reason that sloppy, even criminal behavior has taken hold.

The two others charged -- Detective Sean Johnstone, 34, and Officer
Julio Alvarez, 30 -- worked in a unit that covered both days and
nights, officials said.

In a statement, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney,
said, "I have full confidence in the ability and integrity of the
Internal Affairs Bureau of the N.Y.P.D., and we are working closely with them."

The case began last year, when officials said Detective Johnstone and
Officer Alvarez, who both joined the force in 2001, claimed to have
recovered 17 plastic bags of cocaine, rather than the 28 bags they
actually recovered from a drug suspect Sept. 13 in Brooklyn. A day
later, Detective Johnstone, in a police vehicle, was overheard on a
departmental tape recording bragging to another officer -- not
Officer Alvarez -- about the practice of keeping drugs to give them
to informants, officials said.

Investigators heard the tape later, and in December, Detective
Johnstone and Officer Alvarez were each charged with official
misconduct, falsifying business records and filing false documents.
What happened to the 11 missing bags of drugs is not clear, officials said.

Officials said the man Detective Johnstone and Officer Alvarez
arrested, Michael Pratt, was later an informant against them, telling
internal investigators that the officers had taken more drugs from
him than they claimed -- a fact that would, under normal
circumstances, not be in his best interest to admit.

Peter E. Brill, a lawyer for the Detectives' Endowment Association
who is representing Detective Johnstone, said that his client "avows
his innocence and he will aggressively fight the charges against him."

A wider inquiry by the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau
led to the arrests of Sergeant Arenella and Officer Bowens last week,
officials said. It was not known if the sergeant and officer were the
specific focuses of what is known as an integrity test, or if they
were simply the only ones to fail.

According to officials and court papers, Sergeant Arenella, who
joined the force in 1999, and Officer Bowens, who has been a police
officer since 1995, took a portion of drugs and cash they recovered
in November and provided it to a confidential informant as payback
for pointing out the suspect, who was actually an undercover police officer.

Sergeant Arenella and Officer Bowens recovered 40 plastic bags of
cocaine and $250, but later claimed to have recovered only 38 bags of
the drugs and $210 in cash, giving the rest, enough for personal use,
to the informant as payback, the officials said.

The police disclosed the arrests at 3:44 a.m. on Saturday, in an
e-mail message to reporters.

Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly transferred Deputy Chief James O'Neill,
the commander of the department's narcotics operations, as well as
Inspector James O'Connell, the commander of the Brooklyn South
narcotics bureau. Two captains in that bureau, John Maldari and
Joseph Terranova, were also transferred, officials said.

Officer Bowens's lawyer, Edward J. Mandery, said that by the
officials' own accounts, his client was not shaking down drug dealers
or robbing them for his own profit. "So, it is a situation where
obviously it is unfortunate but it seems to me the intentions were to
apprehend the bad guy, not line his pockets, not falsely arrest
someone," he said. "This is a case where they are trying to stop the
drug dealing and, according to the district attorney's office, went too far."

Andrew C. Quinn, a lawyer for Sergeant Arenella, said his client had
engaged in no criminal wrongdoing.