A Brooklyn detective with more than 18 years on the job and 312 arrests to his name has been forced into retirement after admitting he gave false information during a criminal investigation, even as he insists he never meant to lie about anything material. Patrick Craig, who worked in the NYPD's Gun Violence Suppression Division, pleaded guilty in June 2026 to three disciplinary charges tied to a 2022 shooting investigation in Coney Island.
According to Gothamist, Craig provided false information to his partner for use in a search warrant affidavit, and separately gave false information to Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Daniel Stern about identifying a man tied to the shooting. Craig told Stern that a witness, Michael Murphy, had positively identified the man — but Murphy had not actually identified him before police obtained the warrant, per the same report. The warrant was ultimately signed by a judge on March 29, 2023, and executed by police the following day. It was only on March 31, 2023, that Craig emailed Murphy a photo of the man and asked whether he could identify him, the outlet reports — a sequence that put the identification after the warrant rather than before it, as he had represented to prosecutors.
Why Craig Says He Made the Call
Craig has maintained throughout the disciplinary process that he did not intentionally make materially false statements. He said he believed Murphy could formally identify the man and that the man was already well known to police in the neighborhood, according to Gothamist's reporting. He also failed to properly document his investigative steps and consultations, the outlet notes, and he knew that the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office required personally collected identifying information for a warrant identification.
Tomas Krohn, Craig's partner, swore to the information contained in the search warrant affidavit. The evidence seized under that warrant was ultimately suppressed, Gothamist reports, after the false identification came to light.
Prosecutors Pulled Craig From the Witness List
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office knew about the false identification while the criminal case was still pending and disclosed it to defense attorneys, according to the report. Prosecutors have said they will not call Craig as a witness again. Even so, Craig continued appearing as a witness before Brooklyn grand juries while the disciplinary charges against him were pending, the outlet notes.
Discipline Trial Pit Guidelines Against a Veteran's Record
Deputy Commissioner of Trials Vanessa Facio-Lince, who oversaw the disciplinary case, wrote that Craig was cutting corners in a lengthy investigation to expedite the desired result and found that his actions called his credibility into question. She said his conduct threatened the department's integrity to uphold the rule of law. The NYPD's own department advocate sought Craig's termination outright, and departmental disciplinary guidelines call for dismissal as the presumptive penalty when an official intentionally makes a false statement about a material matter.
That standard is spelled out plainly in NYPD policy: intentionally making a false official statement regarding a material matter “will result in dismissal from the Department, absent exceptional circumstances,” according to a NYPD policy document hosted by nyc.gov. Despite that presumption, Facio-Lince recommended forced separation instead of termination — a recommendation Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch approved on August 7, 2026, letting Craig retire with vested pension benefits rather than lose his job outright.
A Career Record Weighed in His Favor
During the proceedings, three supervisors testified on Craig's behalf, and Daniel Stern — the same assistant district attorney Craig had misled — also testified for him, saying Craig had a very good reputation. Craig's attorney, Roger Bennet Adler, called the lapse in judgment a great Shakespearean tragedy and said it cost Craig the loss of a career he loved.
Under the settlement, Craig forfeited 30 suspension days and all of his accrued leave, and he agreed never to seek reinstatement with the NYPD. The NYPD did not respond to messages seeking comment, according to the Gothamist report.
A Pattern of Litigation and Prior Discipline
Craig's personnel history includes more than this single case. Records reviewed by 50-a.org show he was named in 10 known lawsuits with $242,500 in total settlements, and that profile also lists misconduct findings involving a failure to activate his body-worn camera, patrol-rule violations and abuse of authority. Separately, Gothamist reports the city paid $242,500 to settle seven lawsuits naming Craig, with the largest single settlement, $105,000, reached in 2025. One of those lawsuits accused Craig and other officers of falsely arresting two people in 2017 and submitting an erroneous police report to cover up the arrests, according to the outlet. Craig also forfeited 10 vacation days in 2020 after an incident in which he struck a person and refused to provide his name, Gothamist reports. ProPublica's database additionally lists Craig with a CCRB allegation category of abuse of authority involving a threat of force.
Part of a Broader Pattern in NYPD Credibility Cases
Craig's case lands amid long-standing scrutiny of how the NYPD handles officers accused of lying. A review by LatinoJusticePRLDEF examined 144 cases involving 181 officers accused of lying to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, finding that in more than half of the cases the CCRB forwarded to the NYPD, an officer's testimony was contradicted by recorded video or audio evidence. Nearly half of the officers who lied to the CCRB were never disciplined at all, the group found, and between 2010 and 2020 the department held only five officers accountable for lying to the CCRB — reclassifying every one of those cases as merely “misleading” statements rather than outright lies. From 2011 through 2019, the CCRB determined an officer had made a false official statement in just 169 of 14,990 fully investigated cases, per the same report.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office has confronted the credibility problem publicly before. In November 2019, the office released a list of 54 NYPD officers with credibility issues, including 47 with judicial adverse credibility findings across 53 cases dating back to 2008, according to the New York Daily News. That list included Detective Niurca Quinones, whose actions in a 2016 triple-rape case prompted a judge to call for a mistrial after a victim said the detective showed her a suspect's photo before a lineup. The outlet also reported on a separate case in 2018 in which another NYPD detective was forced to retire after a probe uncovered 10 additional cases involving fabricated witnesses.
