On August 31st, 2022, NYPD officer Matthew Bianchi, pulled over a woman for driving and using the phone, and proceeded to issue her a ticket, to which she made little protest. Two days later, Bianchi was transferred out of the traffic division of his department and placed back on patrol, a job usually meant for rookies, yet he’s been an officer for years.
In a lawsuit that he would later file against New York City, Bianchi alleged that a supervisor told him that Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, requested for him to be moved.
This is not exactly the first conflict involving traffic tickets that Bianchi has encountered since entering the force. He has long protested against the use of the so-called courtesy cards.
Courtesy cards, often referred to as “get out of jail free” cards are wallet-sized passes distributed by police unions to members, who then hand them out to their friends and family who may use it someday to evade certain levels of punishment. Bianchi claimed he was instructed to let card-carriers off without issuing them tickets.
However, Bianchi soon began to take issue with this rule, as by November 2018 (a couple years after he joined the force) drivers were presenting these cards six or seven times a day.
After pulling over a woman one day who had a courtesy card that was beaten up and who was relatively ineligible to use it, Bianchi made a pivotal decision to go ahead and issue her a ticket regardless of her pass.
This would be the start for him of a protest against these connection-based passes which he refused to accept from people he pulled over. He even petitioned his superiors about them, but they would give Bianchi a speech and tell him that the cards were inviolable and represented the brotherhood between the police and their extended family and friends.
Bianchi claims that he believes in this supposed brotherhood, but he also believes that there should be exceptions. “Cops don’t always do the right thing,” he said.
He soon became the butt of a joke among his colleagues, who mocked him on Facebook for issuing a lot of tickets. “You’d rather HURT a legit family member than write one less summons,” one cop wrote.
However, Bianchi’s issue with these courtesy cards may go deeper than a simple question of ethics, as his mother, Martha Ramos, died in a car accident when he was 7 years old.
When this was suggested to him, Bianchi stated, “It’s not what I meant to do, if I did, it was definitely something unconscious.”
The police department declined to comment when asked about Bianchi’s claims that Maddrey retaliated because he ticketed his friend, according to Bianchi’s pending lawsuit.
For now, Bianchi is stuck on patrol until the lawsuit is resolved.
