You Mean Cops Are As Corrupt As That Denzel Washington-Ethan Hawke Vehicle Would Have Us Believe?

Two NYPD officers are accused of taking bribes to protect a Flushing brothel:

They looked the other way, the officials said, while a brothel took in more than $1 million a year from customers who streamed in from shiny late-model cars double-parked outside.

Inside the stucco and brick building, across the street from a cemetery, 16 women, many of whom officials believe paid thousands to come to the United States from South Korea and China, worked as prostitutes behind windows obscured by pink or maroon satin fabric. But the two officers did not take much money: one accepted just several hundred dollars, the other the discounted services of the house, according to court papers.

And they did more than just look away. Prosecutors charge that they helped shut down the brothel’s competitors, essentially using the information they had gleaned in their illicit relationship with one criminal enterprise to burnish their reputations as policemen by working to shut down others.

The Post, on the other hand, obliquely notes that the policemen may have been earning much more than ten-percent-off sex:

wo corrupt Queens cops — once lauded by a smiling Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for their aggressive prostitution crackdowns — were arrested for protecting a brothel that raked in $4,000 a day, officials said yesterday.

In return, Officers Dennis Kim and Jerry Svoronos got free drinks, discount sex and pocket money from Flushing cathouse owners Geeho Chae and Gina Kim, the feds and police said.

. . .

The eight-year veterans, who are now facing 10 years behind bars, say they weren’t looking to get rich.

“I wanted to be the No. 1 cop. You know? Because I wasn’t making sergeant. You know, I wasn’t smart enough,” Kim, 29, told an FBI agent. “You want to impress your supervisors and your peers. That was my intent. So, you know, I got to know him [Chae]. I wasn’t going to hit his place,” Kim told the G-man.

“You’re probably thinking this is suspicious because I’m knocking out his competition. But at the same time, I’m getting collars out of it.”

. . .

After the arraignment, Kim arrived at his Jericho, L.I., home in a Lexus SUV. Svoronos lives in Astoria and owns a BMW.