Ex-NYPD officer from East Islip gets 33 months in prison for bribing cops

By Grant Parpangrant.parpan@newsday.com @GrantParpanUpdated May 18, 2023

A former NYPD officer from East Islip was sentenced to 33 months in prison for paying bribes to a pair of officers in a scheme to divert damaged vehicles to an unauthorized towing company he ran, the U.S. attorney’s office federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

Michael Perri, 34, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner to pay a $25,000 fine. Perri had pleaded guilty to conspiracy last November along with fellow former officers Det. James Davneiro, 43, of Bayside, Queens, and Giancarlo Osma, 40, of Deer Park.

“Michael Perri, after retiring from the NYPD, conspired with two police officers to betray their oaths and the public with promises of easy money, and as a result, they have all been sentenced to prison for their corruption,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Davneiro was sentenced in March to one year in prison and Osma will serve 14 months behind bars, according to court records.

Davneiro and Osma admitted to bypassing the regular NYPD towing process, known as Directed Accident Response Program which has a computer randomly select a licensed tow trucking business to remove vehicles after crashes, and instead using an undisclosed towing and repair facility run by Perri following his 2020 retirement, according to court records.

Prosecutors had said that between May 2020 and May 2021, Davneiro and Osma, while working out of the 107th Precinct in northern Queens, received thousands of dollars of bribe payments from Perri as part of the scheme.

Perri has paid the federal government $158,000 in forfeited assets as part of his plea agreement, officials said.

Eastern District of New York attorneys worked with investigators from the FBI’s Public Corruption Unit and internal affairs investigators from the NYPD to prosecute the case, officials said.