The woman didn’t put up much of a fuss, Bianchi said. She didn’t have a courtesy card and she didn’t drop any names. Bianchi wrote her a ticket and sent her on her way.

Two days later, Bianchi was transferred out of the traffic unit and placed back on patrol. In a lawsuit he filed against New York City, he says that a supervisor told him that Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, requested that he be transferred. Maddrey, Bianchi was told, was friends with the woman he had stopped.