"RIDDLED WITH EXAGGERATIONS" 
Today’s New York Times runs an expose about the NYPD’s disturbing pattern of “testilying” — in which officers bend the truth when testifying about potentially illegal searches of defendants that yield information about criminal activity, so that seized evidence won’t be suppressed under the Fourth Amendment. According to the Times, in more than 20 recent cases judges have found police officers’ testimony to be “patently incredible,” “riddled with exaggerations,” or “unworthy of belief.” But rarely does a judge’s criticism of police tactics make it back to the department, as in a recent case when Southern District Judge John E. Sprizzo concluded that police had “tailored” their testimony to justify searching a man’s backpack (in which they found a gun), but neglected to issue a negative ruling about officers’ credibility, because he doesn’t like “to jeopardize their career and all the rest of it.” Perhaps “testilying” is an outgrowth of a effort by police and prosecutors to try felons found with handguns in federal court, where they face harsher prison sentences, reasons The Times.

A CAMERA'S EYE 
From The Staten Island Advance comes word that Richard Vecchio, the Staten Island police detective acquitted on charges he took lewd photos of two women while on duty, has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. The defendants: the city, the Police Department and its Internal Affairs Bureau, and the Staten Island District Attorney. At a bench trial following a mistrial that ended in a hung jury, Staten Island Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino, Jr. , acquitted Vecchio after finding that he hadn’t shot the photos, which were pictures of an alleged rape victim in the hospital and the exposed breast of a woman booked for leaving the scene of an accident, for his own sexual gratification. “He’s gone through hell,” said Vecchio’s attorney, Jeffrey Lessoff. “It’s hurt him at work, and made him the cause of rebuke and scorn all for no reason and all for doing his job.”

OFFICE ALLEGIANCE?  
Last Friday, Suffolk County Court Judge James Hudson recused himself from presiding over the Grand Jury investigating evidence again in the murder of Martin Tankleff's parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff. Newsday has the story. Martin Tankleff was freed last December after serving 17 years for the crime, following an appellate court ruling that found  a lower court judge did not properly consider new evidence that Seymour Tankleff’s business partner and three other men might have been behind the killings. Hudson, meanwhile, was asked off the case by Martin Tankleff’s lawyers, who allege that the judge’s employment by the Suffolk DA’s office in the late 1980s and early 1990s represents a conflict of interest. “Given the notoriety of the case, it’s almost impossible to believe he didn’t have some exposure to the case, and as a supervisor in that office, that he may have some allegiance to that office,” said Tankleff’s attorney, Barry Pollack.