By Tom Hays, The Associated Press
New York (AP) -- Once Detective Jeff Baird was labeled a “rat,” fellow cops became his exterminators.
Anonymous threats, false rumors and hate mail greeted him at work and home. He was warned he should watch his back. The strain drove him off the force in 2002.
Baird, 49, could have become a forgotten footnote in one of the NYPD’s worst corruption scandals, if not for a sharply worded court decision earlier this month blasting city and police officials for failing to reward and protect him.
The former detective -- who served as a mole for a special commission investigating rogue officers in the early 1990s -- “should be lauded for his courage rather than destroyed by the system whose integrity he sought to preserve,” Justice Louis York wrote in response to a lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court.
Baird’s lawsuit claimed the system cheated him out of a line-of-duty-accident pension for debilitating stress. The city argued that a condition caused by an alleged pattern of harassment does not fall under the legal definition of an accidental injury -- a position York called “pitiful.”
“If each act of harassment and retribution that (Baird) was subjected to can be deemed by (the city) to be ‘expected’ or ‘ordinary,’ then our police force -- and our society -- are in truly dire straits,” the judge wrote in ordering the NYPD to reconsider the pension request.
The judge accused the department of subjecting Baird “to an insidious death by a thousand cuts.”
Leonard Koerner, an attorney with the city Law Department, said officials believe the ruling “departed from well-established legal principle,” and would appeal.
In a phone interview, Baird told The Associated Press that whatever the outcome, he was thankful “someone has separated politics from fact. ... They ruined my whole life because I did what I believed in.”
In 1988, Baird believed that a transfer into the NYPD’s internal affairs division was a good career move. Instead, he says it was an education in chronic ineptitude and systematic misconduct by those supposed to police the police.
The officer learned that the division had devised a system to keep hidden from the public -- and prosecutors -- cases that might embarrass the department. Buried in the file were allegations against high-ranking officers, including one accused of having ties to the mob.
By 1992, the Mollen Commission -- named for its chairman, Milton Mollen, a former judge and deputy mayor -- was investigating allegations that crews of corrupt officers were stealing cash and cocaine from drug dealers.
Baird decided to contacted the commission and sign up as an informer. Using the code name “Mr. G,” he produced documents, other witnesses and information detailing the neglect and abuses in internal affairs. Even chiefs were in on the coverup, he alleged.
The commission ended up advocating outside oversight of internal affairs and stronger protections for whistleblowers. But former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani insisted a revamped internal affairs could clean up the department on its own.
Baird was cast adrift. Once the NYPD learned about his role in the corruption probe, he alleges he was subjected to a campaign of retaliation designed to isolate and intimidate him.
After being assigned to a narcotics unit, some detectives told him he faced harm on undercover buy-and-bust operations because other officers wouldn’t back him up, he said. Supervisors said he was exaggerating the reprisals, and dismissed him as paranoid.
In 1998, Baird’s psychologist diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and had him hospitalized for a month. He returned to restricted duty before retiring with normal benefits.
Civilian Baird still rails about recent reports of another generation of narcotics officers stealing from drug dealers. He also makes no apologies for trying to expose dirty cops from his own era.
“I took an oath,” he said. “I was compelled to come forward. I’d do the same thing today.”