High-Ranking Cop Who Committed Suicide Amidst Corruption Probe Honored With Brooklyn Bike Lane
Michael Ameri, the NYPD highway patrol officer who committed suicide last month, just hours after he was questioned as part of a corruption investigation, was honored this week with a bike lane in Brooklyn, the New York Daily News reports.
A fitting tribute to a man who really cared about #VisionZero pic.twitter.com/VBD5FbBUmF
— Brooklyn Spoke (@BrooklynSpoke) May 31, 2016
According to the Daily News, Ameri was “well known” for keeping bike lanes outside the 78th Precinct in Park Slope clear of snow during the winter, where he was the commanding officer before joining the highway patrol.
“He brought the NYPD and this community together in a strong and powerful way,” City Councilman Brad Lander said during the dedication.
But Ameri was also the focus of a corruption probe that seemed to play a role in his apparent suicide. He was found dead in his car with a gunshot wound to the head on May 13, not long after the FBI interviewed him as part of a mysterious ongoing federal investigation into whether two de Blasio fundraisers—real estate executive Jona Rechnitz and consultant Jeremy Reichberg—received preferential treatment from the city.
The men, both Orthodox businessmen who were reportedly members of the mayor’s inauguration committee, are alleged to have bribed police officers “with jewels and lavish trips in return for favors like police escorts.” Ameri was reportedly interviewed twice before he was found dead in the parking lot of a golf course near his home on Long Island.