An NYPD cop walked away from a Queens car stop he conducted with $1,700 after asking the pulled-over driver for a loan shark reference, a law enforcement source said Thursday.
Officer Armanand Silvestre, 29, was arrested Thursday morning for official misconduct.
He was in uniform and behind the wheel of a police cruiser when on March 1 he pulled a driver over in Queens, the source said.
Silvestre, the source said, wanted to know if the driver could refer him to a loan shark. What happened next is not immediately clear but the officer somehow got “a loan” from the driver, according to a police source, with the promise he’d pay back the money with interest.
The loan was never paid back and the driver at some point notified the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
Silvestre joined the NYPD in November in 2020. At some point during the investigation he was transferred to a Housing Bureau unit tasked with monitoring surveillance cameras.
He was suspended without pay upon his arrest. Silvestre’s arraignment was pending in Queens Criminal Court Thursday afternoon.