May 13, 2025 • 10 mins
A bite-sized look at the NYPD officer who sued the city for firing him over anonymously mailing racist pamphlets to charitable organizations
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/17/nyregion/officer-admits-to-racist-mail-and-is-offered-deal-to-retire.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sotomayors-defense-of-whi_n_210795
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2358084/pappas-v-giuliani/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello listeners, Molly Conger. Here, this is
something a little different. It's not a new full length episode,
but it's not a rerun either. It's just a tiny, little,
bite sized story about a weird little guy. I'd like
(00:23):
to try to do more of these, just a few
minutes about various side characters I found in my research
who didn't really warrant their own tangent in an episode,
but they're interesting enough that you might like to hear
about them, just for a few minutes. We'll see if
I managed to follow through on that, but for now today,
here's a little treat I recently found myself for normal
(00:48):
work related reasons, combing through the campaign finance reports for
David Duke's nineteen ninety six campaign for US Senate. There
are obviously some names in there that I recognize. A
donation from longtime clan lawyer Sam Dixon, salary payments made
to a longtime Duke associate who happens to be the
son in law of a guy who died in a
(01:08):
shootout with US Marshalls, things like that. Some of the
names on those forms or stories I'll tell you eventually,
But as I was flipping idly through lists of small
dollar donors. One line caught my eye, not because it
was a name that I recognized, but because of his profession.
(01:29):
Almost all of the people willingly putting their name on
the record as a David Duke donor by nineteen ninety
six were retired. Line after line after line donors list
their occupation as retired, and for those who did work,
they were almost all self employed. But on August twenty seventh,
nineteen ninety six, David Duke's campaign received a five hundred
(01:53):
dollars contribution from a New York City Police officer. Nineteen
ninety six was a pretty long time ago at this point,
so I was pretty sure there was no chance this
man was still employed by the NYPD, But I was
curious if his fondness for David Duke ever caused any
issues for him in his professional life. That seems like
(02:16):
a pretty safe bet, right, But honestly, it might not
make him that much more racist than any given NYPD
officer chosen at random. But it turns out that Officer
Thomas Poppus did something else in the mid nineties that
almost ended up in front of the Supreme Court. See
(02:36):
In the nineties every year, the Miniola Auxiliary Police Department
sent out mailings requesting donations to their McGruff, the crime
Dog anti drug program. Most people throw that kind of
thing away. Some people will write a check and put
it back in the pre addressed return envelope to make
a donation. But every year one envelope came back to
(02:59):
that barvolunteer organization stuffed with anti Semitic cartoons, pamphlets with
racist conspiracy theories, and materials published by a group called
the National Association for the Advancement of White People. And
by nineteen ninety seven, the volunteer organization receiving these mailings
went to the police. After years of getting these hateful mailings,
(03:22):
they'd hired a company to encode the reply envelopes. If
someone mailed back one of these smaller donation envelopes, they'd
be able to tell exactly where the original mailing had
been sent. So when the racist flyers showed up that year,
they used the tracking code to connect that envelope to
a particular PO box, and when they went to the police,
(03:44):
they were able to determine that PO box was registered
to a New York City police officer, and so to
test their theory, the Nassau County Police sent a fake
letter to that po box soliciting donations for a charitable cause,
and he took the bait, the stuffed reply envelope with
racist flyers, and mailed it back. Nasau County then turned
(04:04):
the investigation over to the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, and
they too tested the theory. They mailed Thomas Papus a
letter asking for donations to a charitable organization, and he
returned the envelope full of anti Semitic cartoons. And when
he was confronted with this evidence, he did eventually admit
that he'd done it. He tried to be casual about it.
(04:25):
At first he said it was just a hobby, and
then it didn't mean anything, and then later in the
same interview, he said it was a form of protest
because he was quote tired of being shaken down by
charitable organizations. And it turned out that while had just
been the one organization who finally figured out where the
mailings were coming from and went to the police, he'd
(04:46):
done this hundreds of times over the years to countless organizations.
After he admitted to the mailings in nineteen ninety eight,
New York Times reported that he was probably going to
be allowed to retire with his pension. After a full
investigation and disciplinary hearing and a lot of public outcry,
he was found guilty of prohibited conduct and fired, so
(05:08):
he sued. He filed a lawsuit in federal court, naming
New York City, the police commissioner and the mayor as defendants,
which in two thousand makes the case citation Pappas v. Giuliani.
Papas claimed he'd been unfairly terminated in retaliation for engaging
in protected First Amendment conduct. The Southern District of New
(05:31):
York disagreed. Pappas was absolutely within his right to mail
people racist pamphlets, but that's not the issue here. He
wasn't criminally charged for it, and there is significant case
law that allows government employers to take disciplinary action when
it comes to speech by public employees when there is
a legitimate government interest in promoting the efficiency of the
(05:51):
public services it performs through its employees. Papas may have
had a better case here if he'd been engaged in
speech that looked more like pro if he'd made any
attempt to engage in public discourse, or if he'd mailed
the flyers to parties who were engaged in public activity
on the issues he claimed he was protesting, but he
(06:11):
was just mailing garbage to any random organization unlucky enough
to have sent him a pre addressed envelope. Quoting from
the opinion, mister Poppus suggests that somehow, by anonymously sending
his white supremacist literature to any charity with the misfortune
of soliciting a donation from him, he was commenting on
perennial matters of public concern, such as taxation, political history, race,
(06:34):
and religion. This claim defies reason and the record. Although
the First Amendments protection does not turn on the effectiveness
of a speaker's media strategy, mister Poppas's purported strategy for
addressing the matter of public concern is so plainly unreasonable
it belies his claim that addressing matters of public concern
(06:55):
was ever his intention. So his speed, which was, as
the Court wrote, of relatively low First Amendment value. And
then on the other side of the scale, there's the
very real concern of the government employer that his activity
could disrupt government business. His activities had become a matter
of real public concern. People were very worried that this
(07:18):
cop hated Jews and black people. So they can't fire
him for being racist, for having racist ideas. They can't
fire him for what's in his heart. But they fired
him for being racist in public, out loud, and in
a way that was damaging to the department's reputation and mission.
And look, just for the sake of this legal argument,
(07:41):
try not to laugh at the idea of the NYPD
having a reputation that could be tarnished like this. Okay, So,
after he lost this lawsuit, he appealed the decision up
to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in two thousand
and two, and they affirmed the lower court's decision, with
one judge on that three judge panel dissenting. And the
descent makes a number of arguments. You know, he wasn't
(08:03):
a supervisor. He did this on his own time. He
didn't do it at work. He did it privately, He
did it anonymously, and most alarmingly. The dissent argues that
if the department had never disciplined him in the first place,
the public trust wouldn't have been damaged because no one
ever would have known that it was a cop doing this,
that the department itself is responsible for the damage to
(08:26):
its own reputation, because I guess the proper course of
action here would have been to cover up this policy violation.
The case was back in the news a few years
later when that dissenting Judge Sonya Soto Mayor was nominated
to the Supreme Court. I found several op eds citing
this dissent as proof that she was a fair minded
(08:49):
defender of free speech, and these were largely attempts to
counter right wing attacks on her nomination. But if you
look back at the majority opinion in this case, for
College Leaguess called her descent a misunderstanding of the law
and seriously misguided. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said in eighteen
(09:09):
ninety two, a policeman may have a constitutional right to
talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be
a policeman. So it turns out police departments really can
fire a cop for being extremely racist in his private life.
They just usually don't want to. We're Little Guys is
(09:46):
a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
written and recorded by me Wiley Coner. Our executive producers
are Sophy Leuctriman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Roy Gagan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Did. You can email me at Weird
Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
read it, but I probably won't answer it. You can
(10:07):
exchange conspiracy theoris about the show with other listeners on
the Weird Little Guys supper at it. Just don't post
anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Little Guys
Cool Zone Media. Hello listeners, Molly Conger. Here, this is
something a little different. It's not a new full length episode,
but it's not a rerun either. It's just a tiny, little,
bite sized story about a weird little guy. I'd like
(00:23):
to try to do more of these, just a few
minutes about various side characters I found in my research
who didn't really warrant their own tangent in an episode,
but they're interesting enough that you might like to hear
about them, just for a few minutes. We'll see if
I managed to follow through on that, but for now today,
here's a little treat I recently found myself for normal
(00:48):
work related reasons, combing through the campaign finance reports for
David Duke's nineteen ninety six campaign for US Senate. There
are obviously some names in there that I recognize. A
donation from longtime clan lawyer Sam Dixon, salary payments made
to a longtime Duke associate who happens to be the
son in law of a guy who died in a
(01:08):
shootout with US Marshalls, things like that. Some of the
names on those forms or stories I'll tell you eventually,
But as I was flipping idly through lists of small
dollar donors. One line caught my eye, not because it
was a name that I recognized, but because of his profession.
(01:29):
Almost all of the people willingly putting their name on
the record as a David Duke donor by nineteen ninety
six were retired. Line after line after line donors list
their occupation as retired, and for those who did work,
they were almost all self employed. But on August twenty seventh,
nineteen ninety six, David Duke's campaign received a five hundred
(01:53):
dollars contribution from a New York City Police officer. Nineteen
ninety six was a pretty long time ago at this point,
so I was pretty sure there was no chance this
man was still employed by the NYPD, But I was
curious if his fondness for David Duke ever caused any
issues for him in his professional life. That seems like
(02:16):
a pretty safe bet, right, But honestly, it might not
make him that much more racist than any given NYPD
officer chosen at random. But it turns out that Officer
Thomas Poppus did something else in the mid nineties that
almost ended up in front of the Supreme Court. See
(02:36):
In the nineties every year, the Miniola Auxiliary Police Department
sent out mailings requesting donations to their McGruff, the crime
Dog anti drug program. Most people throw that kind of
thing away. Some people will write a check and put
it back in the pre addressed return envelope to make
a donation. But every year one envelope came back to
(02:59):
that barvolunteer organization stuffed with anti Semitic cartoons, pamphlets with
racist conspiracy theories, and materials published by a group called
the National Association for the Advancement of White People. And
by nineteen ninety seven, the volunteer organization receiving these mailings
went to the police. After years of getting these hateful mailings,
(03:22):
they'd hired a company to encode the reply envelopes. If
someone mailed back one of these smaller donation envelopes, they'd
be able to tell exactly where the original mailing had
been sent. So when the racist flyers showed up that year,
they used the tracking code to connect that envelope to
a particular PO box, and when they went to the police,
(03:44):
they were able to determine that PO box was registered
to a New York City police officer, and so to
test their theory, the Nassau County Police sent a fake
letter to that po box soliciting donations for a charitable cause,
and he took the bait, the stuffed reply envelope with
racist flyers, and mailed it back. Nasau County then turned
(04:04):
the investigation over to the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, and
they too tested the theory. They mailed Thomas Papus a
letter asking for donations to a charitable organization, and he
returned the envelope full of anti Semitic cartoons. And when
he was confronted with this evidence, he did eventually admit
that he'd done it. He tried to be casual about it.
(04:25):
At first he said it was just a hobby, and
then it didn't mean anything, and then later in the
same interview, he said it was a form of protest
because he was quote tired of being shaken down by
charitable organizations. And it turned out that while had just
been the one organization who finally figured out where the
mailings were coming from and went to the police, he'd
(04:46):
done this hundreds of times over the years to countless organizations.
After he admitted to the mailings in nineteen ninety eight,
New York Times reported that he was probably going to
be allowed to retire with his pension. After a full
investigation and disciplinary hearing and a lot of public outcry,
he was found guilty of prohibited conduct and fired, so
(05:08):
he sued. He filed a lawsuit in federal court, naming
New York City, the police commissioner and the mayor as defendants,
which in two thousand makes the case citation Pappas v. Giuliani.
Papas claimed he'd been unfairly terminated in retaliation for engaging
in protected First Amendment conduct. The Southern District of New
(05:31):
York disagreed. Pappas was absolutely within his right to mail
people racist pamphlets, but that's not the issue here. He
wasn't criminally charged for it, and there is significant case
law that allows government employers to take disciplinary action when
it comes to speech by public employees when there is
a legitimate government interest in promoting the efficiency of the
(05:51):
public services it performs through its employees. Papas may have
had a better case here if he'd been engaged in
speech that looked more like pro if he'd made any
attempt to engage in public discourse, or if he'd mailed
the flyers to parties who were engaged in public activity
on the issues he claimed he was protesting, but he
(06:11):
was just mailing garbage to any random organization unlucky enough
to have sent him a pre addressed envelope. Quoting from
the opinion, mister Poppus suggests that somehow, by anonymously sending
his white supremacist literature to any charity with the misfortune
of soliciting a donation from him, he was commenting on
perennial matters of public concern, such as taxation, political history, race,
(06:34):
and religion. This claim defies reason and the record. Although
the First Amendments protection does not turn on the effectiveness
of a speaker's media strategy, mister Poppas's purported strategy for
addressing the matter of public concern is so plainly unreasonable
it belies his claim that addressing matters of public concern
(06:55):
was ever his intention. So his speed, which was, as
the Court wrote, of relatively low First Amendment value. And
then on the other side of the scale, there's the
very real concern of the government employer that his activity
could disrupt government business. His activities had become a matter
of real public concern. People were very worried that this
(07:18):
cop hated Jews and black people. So they can't fire
him for being racist, for having racist ideas. They can't
fire him for what's in his heart. But they fired
him for being racist in public, out loud, and in
a way that was damaging to the department's reputation and mission.
And look, just for the sake of this legal argument,
(07:41):
try not to laugh at the idea of the NYPD
having a reputation that could be tarnished like this. Okay, So,
after he lost this lawsuit, he appealed the decision up
to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in two thousand
and two, and they affirmed the lower court's decision, with
one judge on that three judge panel dissenting. And the
descent makes a number of arguments. You know, he wasn't
(08:03):
a supervisor. He did this on his own time. He
didn't do it at work. He did it privately, He
did it anonymously, and most alarmingly. The dissent argues that
if the department had never disciplined him in the first place,
the public trust wouldn't have been damaged because no one
ever would have known that it was a cop doing this,
that the department itself is responsible for the damage to
(08:26):
its own reputation, because I guess the proper course of
action here would have been to cover up this policy violation.
The case was back in the news a few years
later when that dissenting Judge Sonya Soto Mayor was nominated
to the Supreme Court. I found several op eds citing
this dissent as proof that she was a fair minded
(08:49):
defender of free speech, and these were largely attempts to
counter right wing attacks on her nomination. But if you
look back at the majority opinion in this case, for
College Leaguess called her descent a misunderstanding of the law
and seriously misguided. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said in eighteen
(09:09):
ninety two, a policeman may have a constitutional right to
talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be
a policeman. So it turns out police departments really can
fire a cop for being extremely racist in his private life.
They just usually don't want to. We're Little Guys is
(09:46):
a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
written and recorded by me Wiley Coner. Our executive producers
are Sophy Leuctriman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Roy Gagan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Did. You can email me at Weird
Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
read it, but I probably won't answer it. You can
(10:07):
exchange conspiracy theoris about the show with other listeners on
the Weird Little Guys supper at it. Just don't post
anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Little Guys
Host
Molly Conger
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