They just want to fight crime — but instead, some three dozen detective investigators for the Bronx District Attorney’s Office are being pulled off the job and forced to take turns working the lobby security desk, searching pockets and purses, The Post has learned.
“Leave your cellphone in your bag,” the frustrated investigators repeat again and again during eight-hour shifts, in what they and their union call a massive waste of money and expertise.
“They’re being pulled off their investigations to do security work that civilians should be doing,” said their union head, John Fleming, president of the Detective Investigators Association.
“It’s robbing the citizens of Bronx County of some of our most highly qualified detectives in the city, including guys with 20-plus years as detectives in the NYPD.”
A total of 300 detective investigators work in the five county DA offices and the citywide Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor — interviewing victims and witnesses, arresting suspects, conducting undercover investigations, and installing and running wiretaps.
Only in The Bronx are “DIs” pulled to work at the lobby metal detectors, in their case at the DA headquarters on East 161st Street.
It’s been the Bronx DA’s practice for the past two years, and it’s one big reason DIs are quitting in droves, Fleming says.
In the past year, 14 have left — four in the last month alone, including two ex-NYPD detectives with at least 30 years of experience. That’s out of a total force of 39.
“They’re having a mass exodus there,” said one of those who quit.
“It’s absurd having all this law enforcement experience sitting all day scanning people,” he added. “When I signed up for the job, the job posting never mentioned you do lobby security.”
The DAs in other boroughs man their lobbies with NYPD peace officers or private security guards who are paid around $15 an hour, half of what the typical DI makes.
“A lot of people dislike it,” one DI said as he worked the Bronx DA’s magnetometers recently. “They’d rather be doing investigations, or chasing down bad guys.”
The Bronx is the last place this should happen, Fleming says. The borough’s DA has the lowest conviction rates in the city.
Only 51.4 percent of all Bronx felony arrests result in a conviction, as compared with 59.8 percent in Brooklyn, 60.9 percent in Queens, 61.3 percent in Staten Island, and 68.9 percent in Manhattan, according to stats from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
“There is no link between the detective-investigator issues and conviction rates,” the Bronx DA’s Office said. “Over the past 25 years, the reduction in violent crime has been as dramatic in The Bronx as it has been anywhere else.”
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano