Ex-NYPD Detective Known as ‘The Closer’ Accused of Framing Dozens for Murder, Costing City $110 Million.
Louis Scarcella told Dr. Phil on his show: ‘The bad guys don’t play by the rules when they kill Ma and Pop … I don’t play by the rules’.
A retired NYPD detective allegedly has cost the state and city a combined $110 million in civil litigation payouts after his underhanded, illicit tactics were exposed, leading to the reversal of more than a dozen murder convictions.
The New York Times has been reporting on allegations against Louis Scarcella since 2013, when a witness to the 1989 murder of a Brooklyn rabbi first came forward, alleging they were told to identify David Randa as the killer during a subsequent lineup.
The Times reports that prosecutors investigating Randa’s case discovered that Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, allegedly provided several inmates with crack cocaine and prostitutes in exchange for their incriminating testimony against Randa.
Randa served 20 years before the truth came to light. He has since received settlements of $6.4 million from the city and another $2 million from the state for his wrongful conviction.
Thirteen other people investigated by Scarcella also had their names cleared. For decades, defense attorneys publicly accused him of coaching witnesses and coercing confessions.
All told, the Times claims New York City has paid $73.1 million in settlements to people investigated by the former detective, dubbed “The Closer” by colleagues, while the state has forked over another $36.9 million.
The Times piece alleges that Scarcella, now 72, coerced confessions and fabricated witness testimony in order to secure erroneous convictions while assigned to the Brooklyn North homicide squad during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.
New York City is facing a fresh round of lawsuits from three men, who were cleared last year in the brutal 1995 murder of a subway token clerk.
Scarcella appeared on the Dr. Phil show after his retirement, and said he would do “whatever I have to do within the law” to elicit confessions or a suspect’s cooperation.
“The bad guys don’t play by the rules when they kill Ma and Pop,” he told the host. “I don’t play by the rules, but I play within the moral rules and the rules of the arrest in Brooklyn.”
He said he was the lead on at least 175 cases and assisted with another 175.
The Times reports claims against the city by people wrongful convicted through Scarcella’s detective work constitute 16% of all the money the city’s paid out for reversed convictions between 2014 and 2022.
Scarcella and Chmil, who is also retired, have yet to face criminal charges for their alleged actions.
Their attorneys told the Times their clients used techniques that are legal and still in use today, noting prosecutors signed off on all of the cases the cops brought them.
