A New York City police officer has been fined for carrying out a bizarre campaign of harassment against a citizen who complained about police parking on the sidewalk and in front of fire hydrants. "I left a voicemail for him in which I pretended to be a former romantic partner," Officer Brendan Sullivan admitted. Sullivan used "the breathy voice of a seductive woman" in the first of six messages he left for Paul Vogel over 10 months in 2021 and 2022, the New York Times reports. It can be heard here. In other calls Sullivan made on his NYPD-issued phone, he made dolphin noises, followed by sheep and seal noises.
Sullivan was fined $500 last month after New York's Conflicts of Interest Board determined he had "sought to discourage a citizen from exercising his constitutional right about government action," the Times reports. He was also docked 60 days of leave, worth around $25,000. Police said he was taken off patrol and placed on "modified duty." Streetsblog reports that records show the officer, who joined the force in 2007, is now in the Quartermaster Section, which handles office supplies. Sullivan was docked 30 days of leave in 2015 for sending a Jewish officer text messages that included a photo of Holocaust victims and a photo of Adolf Hitler.
Vogel tells the Times that he is a "habitual caller" to the city's 311 complaints line about illegally parked emergency vehicles in his Brooklyn neighborhood. "It's not a minor thing," he says. "It puts people in danger." He tells Streetsblog that he has mixed feelings about Sullivan's punishment. "The money and vacation days seems a lot for some prank calls," he says. "On the other hand, breaching confidentiality of my personal information and harassing a member of the public—he should lose his badge." (More NYPD stories.)
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