Bronx juries are to the New York police what third terms are to New York mayors: sources of bedevilment. There is nothing new in this, but lately it has acquired a fresh twist. The reason is a tendency of some officers — probably more than a few — to fix tickets as a, ahem, “professional courtesy” to an assortment of friends, relatives and some others found in the ranks of the overprivileged.

The latest example of the Bronx blues for the police came a few days ago when a jury in state court found a lawyer, Stephen Lopresti, not guilty of drunken driving. Mr. Lopresti seems to have trouble remembering the precept that drinking and driving don’t mix. He has been convicted three times of driving while intoxicated. Last week, he was up on charges yet again, facing disbarment if found guilty.

This time, a Bronx jury gave him a pass.
Some jurors said later that the prosecution’s evidence left them unimpressed. But something else led them to their verdict, which took them all of 45 minutes to reach. They doubted the trustworthiness of two police officers who, while testifying against Mr. Lopresti, admitted to having fixed tickets in other cases.

That kind of police finagling, a time-honored practice, has emerged as a new ace in the hole for defense lawyers in the Bronx, where a grand jury is looking into a scandal that may involve several hundred officers. In a separate Bronx trial last month, an officer’s admission to having been a fixer seemed to influence jurors who acquitted a man of attempted murder and weapons charges.

Any officers testifying before a Bronx jury may well be asked now if they ever made tickets disappear. If the answer is yes, the Bronx district attorney’s office has an albatross around its neck.

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