A man wrongly imprisoned by NYPD officers who then allegedly falsified evidence to cover up their mistake says the NYPD has blood on its hands for the four murders that took place while he was behind bars.

Eric Glisson, who served almost 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, tells the New York Post that after his 1995 arrest for the murder of taxi driver Baithe Diop, the actual killers continued their murder spree while his arresting officers covered up their mistake instead of solving the crime.

“I think it’s a tragedy that these other people had to lose their lives because of the negligence of the New York City Police Department,” Glisson told the Post.

The killings were the work of the Sex Money Murder gang, which pulled off a series of robberies and murders in the Bronx in the nineties. Jose “Joey Green Eyes” Rodriguez and Gilbert “Gorgeous Indian” Vega were eventually arrested for a different set of crimes, wherein they cut a deal with investigators and admitted to the murder of Diop. Glisson was finally exonerated in 2012.

“I guess if you’re sitting up there [in The Bronx] and you’re the cops who put five people in jail for something they didn’t do, you probably have an incentive to let sleeping dogs lie,” Glisson’s lawyer, Peter Cross, adds. Glisson and his daughter are now suing the NYPD for $100 million.