His actions—or lack thereof—are sickening.
To think he swore to serve and protect the proud people of this great city, counted himself among the few dubbed the Finest.
What’s worse is he pulled off stunt after stunt, seemingly with impunity, for a solid year…in our own backyard.
So on Saturday, City Police Det. Thomas Rice got what he deserved: a humiliating picture of the veteran cop on the front page of the New York Daily News next to the headline that blared: “Slimiest of the Finest.”
The exclusive story therein paints a picture so rotten that it’s almost too ridiculous to believe. According to the News, Rice—now dubbed Det. Do-Little—made up fake names and addresses to improperly close at least 22 grand larceny and auto theft cases over a 12-month period in 2011 and 2012, all while assigned to the 106th Precinct detective squad, an NYPD investigation found.
Rice often used the same fake names and made-up addresses across multiple reports and cut-and-pasted the exact same statements, including typos, into reports. Four different supervisors in the 106, including Rice’s lieutenant, signed off on the breathtaking fraud, an internal investigation found.
It gets better. (I employ “better” here because the alternative, while certainly accurate, just makes this that much more depressing. Sort of like laughing – if only just to keep from crying.)
Even after he was exposed, Rice was just docked 20 vacation days and briefly demoted. Since 2013, he has been a detective in the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn.
“If someone is going to go to the extent of fabricating names and addresses, they just don’t care about the people they are supposed to be serving,” retired NYPD Chief of Patrol and former City Transportation Commissioner Wilbur Chapman told the News. “He was able to accomplish this because no one was paying attention. It’s an insult to all the detectives who are out there working very hard to solve cases.”
And a couple of days before the Rice debacle hit the front page, a Queens jury determined that another Finest Fraud who decided to shame his shield and infect the names of good and decent (see: real Finest) cops with his abhorrent behavior has to pay the piper. Det. Kevin Desormeau was convicted of perjury and other charges for having falsely arrested a man in August 2014 on drug charges and then repeatedly lying about the arrest before a grand jury and during a court hearing.
He now faces up to seven years in prison when he’s sentenced on March 21.
We document these cases not to point and laugh, or to kick cops when they’re down, but rather to show you that, indeed, bad apples can spoil a bunch.
These two lions of laziness ruin it for the vast majority of the Finest who actually do right by the proud people of this great city.
