BY SAL GRECO
The scandals just keep coming.
NYPD Officer Matthew F. Lambert is now facing criminal charges in Manhattan after prosecutors accused him of abusing his position as a police officer to pursue relationships with women he encountered through official police business.
According to court records reviewed by The Sal Greco Show, Lambert has been charged with three counts of Official Misconduct and one count of Receiving Unlawful Gratuities.
The allegations are stunning.
Prosecutors allege Lambert sent unsolicited intimate text messages to women while assigned as the investigating officer on their criminal complaints. In another alleged incident detailed in the criminal complaint, Lambert arrested a woman and allegedly suggested he could secure a Desk Appearance Ticket rather than have her processed through Central Booking and held for arraignment before a judge.
The complaint further alleges that while processing the arrest, Lambert showed the woman a sexually explicit photograph of himself. Prosecutors claim that after she was issued a DAT and released from custody, the two later engaged in a sexual relationship.
Lambert is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court, and the allegations remain just that—allegations. But if prosecutors can prove what is outlined in the charging documents, it would represent a shocking abuse of the trust and authority granted to a New York City police officer.
The arrest is also the latest black eye for an NYPD that seems unable to escape controversy.
From overtime scandals and time-theft allegations to misconduct investigations and disciplinary controversies, critics argue that the department under Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch continues to generate headlines for all the wrong reasons.
While Tisch did not create every problem facing the NYPD, she now owns the responsibility for fixing them. Yet scandal after scandal continues to emerge, fueling criticism that accountability is inconsistent and that misconduct is still thriving inside the nation’s largest police department.
For New Yorkers, the question is becoming impossible to ignore: if the scandals keep piling up, at what point does the responsibility move beyond individual officers and land squarely on the leadership of the department itself?
As Officer Lambert’s criminal case proceeds through the courts, the NYPD finds itself confronting another embarrassing controversy—and Commissioner Jessica Tisch faces another test of whether she can restore public confidence in a department increasingly defined by scandal rather than reform.
According to Inner City Press, former NYPD Officer Matthew Lambert ultimately pleaded guilty to charges stemming from allegations that he sent inappropriate messages to two women who were crime victims and engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman shortly after arresting her. He was reportedly sentenced to probation. As questions continue to swirl about accountability and oversight, requests for comment from the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information (DCPI) went unanswered.
