NYPD Whistleblower Says He Was Forcibly Admitted to Psych Ward

On Monday, I wrote about NYPD whistle-blower Adrian Schoolcraft, who recorded hundreds of conversations and roll call meetings at his precinct in Brooklyn. The recordings supported prior allegations that NYPD is encouraging its officers to harass New Yorkers with "stop and frisk" encounters and bogus arrests while encouraging the same officers to downgrade actual crimes, or not report them at all.

Schoolcraft's recordings were first brought to light earlier this month in an ongoing series of reports by the Village Voice, but the NYPD officer had been sounding alarms internally at the department for months.

Yesterday, former Newsday police columnist Len Levitt reported a distrubing addition to the story:

Schoolcraft has already paid a price for speaking out. As in the old Soviet Union, police forcibly took him to Jamaica Hospital last October, where, he says, he was kept against his will inside the psychiatric ward for six days.

He landed there last Halloween night after the NYPD came to his home in Queens and ordered him back to work after he says he fell ill and left his tour of duty an hour early.

When he refused to return, officers called Emergency Medical Service, which determined he had high blood pressure, then transported him to Jamaica Hospital, where he ended up in the psych ward - hardly the usual place for treating blood pressure problems.

His father Larry says the hospital has refused to release the records of his son's stay, including the name of the admitting doctor.

Levitt says the hospital is now going over Schoolcraft's records again, and will release them to him by the end of the week.