Michael Dowd: NYPD 75th Precinct Corruption and the Mollen Commission

Michael Dowd is a former NYPD officer who became one of the most notorious corrupt cops in the department’s history, running a crew out of Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct in the late 1980s and early 1990s that robbed drug dealers, sold cocaine, and collected up to $8,000 a week in protection money. He was arrested in 1992, sentenced in 1994 to 14 years in federal prison, and served 12. His case became the public centerpiece of the Mollen Commission, which found that NYPD leadership had spent years ignoring complaints about him.

What He Did at the 75th Precinct

Dowd joined the NYPD in 1982 at age 20 and was assigned the following year to the 75th Precinct in East New York, then one of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods and a hub of the crack epidemic.¹ He started small, accepting free drinks and food within weeks of being sworn in. Within about a year at the 75th, he had organized a crew of officers robbing drug dealers of up to $500 a week.

By 1986 the operation had expanded dramatically. Dowd and his associates were charging dealers up to $8,000 a week for protection, participating in kidnappings, and selling stolen narcotics on Long Island.¹ A key partner was fellow 75th Precinct officer Kenneth Eurell. The two stole cash from crime scenes and sold confidential information about police drug investigations to dealers in exchange for bribes.² Eurell later retired on disability at 28 and began dealing cocaine himself.

Prosecutors would later allege that Dowd had also conspired with drug dealers to kidnap a Queens woman whose husband had disappeared with roughly $200,000 worth of cocaine. The dealers planned to kill her, and Dowd planned to use his cut to flee to Nicaragua.³

How He Got Away With It for So Long

Dowd was not subtle. He drove a bright red $35,000 Corvette to work. A limousine picked him up at the station house for gambling trips to Atlantic City. On a patrolman’s salary, he owned four homes.⁴

Over roughly six years the NYPD received 16 separate complaints alleging that Dowd was robbing drug dealers and dealing cocaine. None led to meaningful action.⁴ In 1988, Internal Affairs Sergeant Joe Trimbole opened an investigation, but it stalled against institutional resistance.¹ The Mollen Commission later concluded that senior NYPD leaders had “repeatedly ignored” corruption allegations or “blocked efforts to check them out” to shield the department from scandal, singling out Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward and Chief of Inspectional Services Daniel F. Sullivan for creating what it called “an unmistakable policy to avoid corruption scandals.”

How He Was Caught

Dowd was not brought down by the NYPD. On May 6, 1992, Suffolk County police arrested him and five other officers in a sting called “The Losers’ Club.” He had cocaine in his uniform pocket at the time of arrest.¹ Eurell, arrested separately that same year, cooperated with investigators to build the case against his former partner.²

The Federal Case and Sentence

Dowd was prosecuted in Federal District Court in Manhattan before Judge Kimba M. Wood. The charges covered shaking down drug dealers, selling cocaine, and shielding dealers from arrest.³ Even after his arrest he kept at it: authorities found he had been writing letters to a drug dealer from his federal detention cell as recently as nine months before sentencing.

On July 11, 1994, Judge Wood sentenced him to 14 years in federal prison, with parole eligibility after 11. The sentence was just short of the maximum. Wood granted a small concession for Dowd’s cooperation with the Mollen Commission, though prosecutors characterized that testimony as “useless” in building cases against other corrupt officers.³ He ultimately served 12 years.⁵

The Mollen Commission

Dowd became the public face of the Mollen Commission, formally the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department. On September 27, 1993, he appeared as its first witness in public hearings and testified that he had earned $8,000 a week in graft.⁶

The commission’s findings, issued July 7, 1994, described corruption that extended well beyond any single officer. A hiring frenzy driven by rising 1980s crime had produced grossly inadequate background checks: roughly 20% of officers later suspended or dismissed should never have been hired based on information already in their personnel files, and some 88% of officers studied entered the Police Academy before their background investigations were even completed.⁷ Supervisors routinely skipped evaluations and used boilerplate performance reviews that insulated problem officers. Dowd told the commission that the “lack of strong supervision and many supervisors’ apparent willful blindness” led him and other corrupt officers to believe they could “do just about anything and get away with it.”

In response, the city established the Commission to Combat Police Corruption in February 1995 as a permanent independent monitor of NYPD anti-corruption efforts.⁸

Where Dowd Is Now

After his 2015 release, Dowd was featured prominently in the documentary The Seven Five, which chronicled the corruption at the 75th Precinct.²

In April 2023, he walked into NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza, saying he was accompanying a retired sergeant who needed a new ID card. He made it to the second-floor Shield Unit and posted a photo of himself on Instagram captioned, “At @1policeplaza finally getting my exit photo.”⁵ The NYPD responded by posting wanted-style signs at security booths near the public entrances to 1 Police Plaza, featuring Dowd’s photograph and the instruction: “Terminated from the NYPD and convicted Felon. If he attempts to gain access to [headquarters], MUST STOP DO NOT ALLOW ENTRY.” The retired sergeant who had brought him in, Theodore Hanlon, was also banned, and Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell ordered a review of how guests of retirees are granted access to the building.⁹

1
NY Daily News. Dirty Officer’s Twisted, Tragic Fall From Grace
2
WBEZ. A Dirty Cop Comes Clean
3
New York Times. Convicted Police Officer Receives a Sentence of at Least 11 Years
4
New York Times. The Dowd Case: Officer Flaunted Corruption His Superiors Ignored
5
New York Post. NYPD Bans Infamously Corrupt Cop After April Visit to Police Headquarters
6
John Jay College Library. Michael F. Dowd Testimony Record
7
Dolan Consulting Group. The Mollen Commission Report 25 Years Later: Lessons in Police Management
8
NYC Commission to Combat Police Corruption. Final Report
9
NY Daily News. NYPD’s Dirtiest Cop Michael Dowd Barred From Police Headquarters After Surprise Visit