“Bianchi’s service as a traffic cop ended last summer when he wrote a ticket to a friend of the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states.”
Three days after that stop, Mathew Bianchi was off traffic duty and on night patrol. The PBA hands out laminated cards that friends and family flash to skip tickets, sometimes in exchange for a discount on a meal or a home repair. The quota stays the same, so the tickets land on drivers without a card, and on Staten Island that means minority drivers, according to the complaint. Everyone else calls it a protection racket with lamination.