- An NYPD officer claims ‘highway therapy’ was used after he ticketed city staff.
- A lawsuit alleges senior officials sent him to Staten Island over a bruised ego.
- He says he lost overtime, missed a promotion, and later had to move homes.
Commuting is what many see as a necessary evil. Employees are rarely paid for it, yet they spend hours of their lives each week doing it. According to one NYPD officer, leadership allegedly assigned him a two-hour commute and called it “highway therapy” after he claims he ticketed the wrong people. Failing to recognize one of the department’s rising stars may have also contributed to what he describes as his punishment.
A new lawsuit against the NYPD filed in New York Supreme Court accuses former Chief of Department John Chell, former Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, and Transit Chief Joseph Gulotta of retaliating against Schwartz. Highway therapy, a tactic reported by some sources to be normalized inside the NYPD, is at the center of the case.
According to NY Streets Blog that first reported the story, highway therapy is a practice of reassigning an officer to a faraway post, effectively leaving them with an expensive, miserable commute. In Schwartz’s case, that meant moving him from Queens to Staten Island, a trip the lawsuit says could stretch beyond two hours each way…