[Scan-DC] Ex-jailer's bad bust over radios spurs lawsuit

[Alan Henney]

This case sounds familiar!


Daily News (New York)

November 2, 2015 Monday  
SPORTS FINAL EDITION

POOR SIGNAL Ex-jailer's bad bust over radios spurs lawsuit

BYLINE: BY JOHN MARZULLI NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 455 words

THERE'S GOING to be some static over the arrest of a retired city correction officer in a botched NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau sting operation.

Martin Bleiwas, 63, has been a police scanner radio buff since he was a kid and founded the radio repair shop at the city Correction Department in 1981. 

Bleiwas served as a correction officer for 20 years but found himself on the wrong end of handcuffs last spring as a result of sloppy police work by the supposedly elite Internal Affairs Bureau.

"If they're ill-prepared to investigate a garden-variety case like this, it calls into question their ability and competence to investigate serious police misconduct," said civil rights lawyer Brett Klein, who is representing Bleiwas. Klein plans to file a federal lawsuit this week over the ordeal.

The story of Bleiwas' radio days begins in 1994, when he purchased from a friend more than 1,000 Motorola portable radios that had been decommissioned by various city agencies and auctioned by the city Department of General Services. Last March, someone calling himself "PD Collector" responded to Bleiwas' ad on eBay and purchased a radio for $70. That was the end of it - or so Bleiwas thought - until April 7, when his phone rang at 6 a.m. and a sergeant was on the line ordering him to open the front door of his Long Island home.

Nine investigators from Internal Affairs were outside, armed with a search warrant. Bleiwas said he was asked about radios. He immediately volunteered to show them the documentation he had from the auction, but a detective named Leon Lian told him, "That's OK, bring it to court," according to Klein.

Bleiwas was hauled off to the 1st Precinct stationhouse in lower Manhattan, where he was booked on a charge of possession of stolen property.

Klein said the IAB investigators were apparently operating under the assumption that the radios could not be legally sold therefore they must be stolen.

The charge was dismissed in September and Bleiwas had trouble getting his radios returned until he wrote a letter directly to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr., he said.

But that's still not the end of it. Bleiwas has filed a complaint alleging that his wife's diamond earrings, several radios, and a BB gun were missing after Internal Affairs searched his home. The bureau's Group One, which investigates allegations of misconduct against its own members, is looking into his complaint.

Bleiwas is also trying to get his security guard license restored. "It's very upsetting," he told the Daily News. "I can't believe that this happened to me. I wasn't doing anything wrong."

An NYPD spokesman said Bleiwas was arrested based on a warrant approved by the DA's office and declined to comment on the allegations.

GRAPHIC: Raid found police radios (also r.) thought stolen that Marty Bketwas (below) proved he'd bought in 1994. KEVIN C. DOWNS