NEW YORK, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A former New York narcotics detective has testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.
Stephen Anderson testified under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors after he was implicated in the corruption scandal that resulted in the arrests of eight police officers and a department shake-up, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.
Anderson was arrested for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out a fellow officer, Henry Tavarez, whose "buy-and-bust" arrests had been low, the newspaper reported.
"I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy," Anderson testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Anderson's testimony came in the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.
"Did you observe with some frequency this ... practice which is taking someone who was seemingly not guilty of a crime and laying the drugs on them?" Justice Gustin Reichbach asked Anderson.
"Yes, multiple times," Anderson replied. "As a detective, you still have a number to reach while you are in the narcotics division."
Police officials did not respond to a request for comment, the Daily News said.
