The retired officer, Robert Smith, is also accused of smuggling heroin for an unnamed criminal organization after he left the Police Department in March 2020. According to court documents, Mr. Smith, 44, accepted bribes for years from an unnamed tow truck company and an unnamed conspirator, identified only as “Individual No. 1,” in exchange for enlisting the person’s tow trucks at crash scenes, subverting the department’s system for assigning tow trucks. Mr. Smith went on to recruit two officers, Heather Busch, 34, and Robert Hassett, 36, from the same Queens precinct where he worked in the scheme, according to court records. Together, they received thousands of dollars in cash payments, much of it funneled through a locked mailbox the officers shared, the authorities said.

Source: New York Times May 11, 2021 17:57 UTC