NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell has ordered a review after former NYPD officer Michael Dowd, who was known as ‘the city’s most corrupt ex-cop’ for crimes in the late ’80s and early ’90s, brazenly walked into police headquarters in lower Manhattan and snapped several photos of himself smiling before posting them to Instagram.
Dowd strolled into One Police Plaza and took a photo of himself in the second-floor Shield Room and joked about getting his exit photo.
‘At @1policeplaza finally getting my exit photo,’ Dowd wrote, ‘#NYPD #thesevenfive.’
Dowd’s illegal activities were explored in the 2014 documentary The Seven Five which exposed how he and his partner shook down drug dealers and sold their narcotics while working in Brooklyn’s 75th precinct.
Dowd’s life as a cop is a story of lawlessness in the garb of uniform, of cops and robbers with Dowd and his ‘crew’ of brother cops, in particular his one-time partner, Kenny Eurell.
Former NYPD cop, Michael Dowd, who spent 12 years in prison for corruption, visited police HQ in Manhattan and shared several pictures of himself on social media
Dowd joked about getting his exit photo and used the hashtags #NYPD and #thesevenfive – a reference to the NYPD police precinct where he once worked
Across eight of the ten and a half years during which Dowd was an NYPD cop he lived a life of escalating crime and excess.
He shook down dealers, he took protection money from drug lords, he planned and took part in armed robberies, he stole from crime scenes – money and drugs – and ultimately he trafficked and dealt drugs himself.
Dowd’s crimes eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment for 12 years.
Despite his past criminal activities, incredibly Dowd was allowed into the department’s visitors center entrance without any issue later posting photos of his visit on social media.
Dowd, now 62, defended his actions, stating that he was joking and poking fun at himself.
‘I’m a funny guy,’ Dowd told The New York Post. ‘I have a sense of humor. I was poking fun at myself. Had I done the right thing I would have been able to honorably take a pension.’
Dowd’s illegal activities were exposed in 1992 yet despite his criminal history, Dowd was allowed into the department’s visitors center entrance without any issue
The disgraced ex-cop, now 62, spent 12 years in prison for shaking down drug dealers, pilfering their wares, and then selling the narcotics while working in Brooklyn’s 75 Precinct in the late ’80s and early ’90s
Some of those commenting questioned why a former corrupt cop was allowed access to the building, and called for an investigation into the matter.
‘The only worthy exit photo is the one that was on the cover of Newsday 30 something years ago with you and the rest of your crew being led out of a precinct in shackles,’ wrote one user.
‘Since when do we let perps into 1PP?’ questioned another.
‘I’m surprised with this administration they let you in the building,’ added another user.
Dowd had been in the building with a retired cop who was there to obtain a new ID card. Dowd noted that officers at the department’s visitors center entrance did not question Dowd about letting him inside the building.
The commissioner’s review will look at the process by which retirees’ guests are granted access.
A retired police officer who worked in the department at the same time as Dowd said the post ‘made my stomach turn.’
Across eight of the ten and a half years during which Dowd was an NYPD cop he lived a life of escalating crime and excess
An officer carries out a stop in East New York in the 1980s. Crime was rampant and the temptation to become corrupt was too much for Dowd and other officers
‘It’s a bad look for the police department,’ a retired cop said. ‘One of the most corrupt cops you’ve had taking pictures and making jokes. They should investigate who let him in there.’
Dowd has since moved on from his past and claims to be working on a TV series and a reality show.
He argued that he has served his time and paid his debt to society, and asked people to let go of the past.
‘Everybody falls short of the glory of perfection and I have people calling me a perp?’ he asked. ‘I did my time. I paid my debt to society.’
Dowd was finally caught in May 1992 when the truth came spilling out.
The outrage over his behavior was intensified by the fact that it wasn’t the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau that finally put a stop to him, but Suffolk County Police who caught him in their own undercover drug sting.
Dowd’s case and the systemic failure that saw the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau fail to substantiate 16 complaints made against him over the years before it exploded into a very public scandal.
In September 1993, Dowd testified before the Mollen Commission – set up to investigate police corruption in the wake of his case.
Asked by the commission if he had considered himself a cop or a drug trafficker he paused, deep in thought, before answering ‘both’.
Former Officer Michael Dowd, 62, is known as ‘NYPD’s most corrupt cop’ after he spent 12 years behind bars for leading a ring of extorting, drug-pushing, money-laundering police in Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct
Crack had flooded New York and in its wake was ready cash. Dowd and the other members of ‘his crew’ saw easy pickings
The epidemic of crime in the 75th Precinct made it the second deadliest in New York, behind a bronx precinct, and saw its officers in constant danger
Dowd only became a police officer by chance. The third of seven children born to a firefighter father and stay at home mother he was a good student who was advised to consider becoming ‘a doctor, a lawyer or an accountant’.
But he took the police test as well as the firefighter test and, he said, ‘the police test came back first. Simple as that.’
The path was set. Dowd graduated from the Police Academy in 1982 and was immediately assigned to the 75th Precinct – one of the deadliest in the country.
Nothing in the academy had prepared Dowd for the reality of the streets. He said: ‘The first time somebody calls you “Officer” you’re looking round to find the officer.
‘You learn the walk of someone who has a gun. You learn the eye drift of someone who’s on drugs…It’s a process.’
And part of that process was, according to Dowd, making the decision between ‘vouchering something you find’ – recording and registering cash and possessions found in the course of an arrest – and just taking it.
The thrill of getting away with it was what kept him coming back for more. The next time an opportunity presented itself to him was, he recalled, a shooting in a drug house. He was the first to arrive on the scene.
Michael Dowd was a young cop when his life began to go wrong. After taking cash from crime scenes for some time, Dowd eventually brokered a deal between the cops and a drug baron, Adam Diaz
He said: ‘I show up and I can’t get in the building because the guy’s head is blocking the door. I’m literally walking over his body to get in. Inside you can see his partner – they were young kids – wiping the blood of his best friend off his hands.
‘So as it turns out there’s money and drugs there – a lot. I see a separate stash of about $800. This guy’s not paying attention. So I take it.
‘It was weird. I just put it in my pocket. Then the investigators show up. There’s about five pounds of reefer, $500 of cash. The sergeant goes, ‘Is that it?’ And he looks at me and I felt like he knew. So I took the $800 out of my pocket and I gave it back.
Covering East New York, the 75th precinct became a ground zero for the lawlessness which came to characterize 1980s New York, before the zero-tolerance policing tactics which cleaned up the city
‘I was still at that point of feeling uncomfortable about taking anything.’
Later that night Dowd saw the sergeant at a local bar and approached him. He said: ‘I said to him, “Sarge, when I handed you that money today I took it out of my pocket. What do you think?” He said, “I don’t give a f*** what you do before I get there..and if I happen to get there and you’ve already got something, I didn’t see it.”
‘Bingo! A light went on. Like people do this, you ain’t the only one. It was like I had permission now.’
From then on, he said: ‘I made sure I was first on a crime scene.’
He took bags of money from drug houses, guns and cocaine. At the time a kilo of cocaine was worth $34,000. When he found a stash his first thought was, ‘Pay dirt.’
He said: ‘I did something wrong. We all knew it was wrong, myself especially, but it was an addictive excitement.’