Metro

TV cops share surnames with bumbling detectives behind costly wrongful arrest

The NYPD’s real-life Peralta and Santiago make the ones on “Brooklyn Nine Nine” look like cop-of-the-year candidates.

A bumbling pair of Central Park detectives who share surnames with the sitcom characters cost the city more than a quarter-million dollars for a wrongful arrest, The Post has learned.

Santiago Peralta and Julio Santiago responded to a report of a subway robbery on Christmas Day 2012, according to a Manhattan federal-court lawsuit, and picked up Rasfa Ramsay, Peter Vlastaras and Idris Payne as they left a friend’s apartment on the Upper West Side.

But unlike Andy Samberg and Melissa Fumero — whose portrayals of Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago have landed the show multiple Emmys — their performance that followed fell totally flat.

When the detectives showed the robbery victim the suspects, he told the cops they had the wrong guys, but Peralta and Santiago arrested them anyway, the suit says.





Ramsay, Vlastaras and Payne were then transported to the NYPD’s Transit Bureau, where, despite the lack of evidence against them, they were charged.

While there, the men overheard another officer say he wouldn’t release them because “he needed to make overtime money in order to put a new roof on his house,” per court papers.

An assistant DA refused to prosecute the men. Incredibly, instead of releasing them, the trio was then hauled into a police van in shackles and transported to Central Booking to await arraignment.

It was only there, more than 24 hours later, that they were released. Payne initialed settled his case for $25,000, and Ramsay and Vlastaras were awarded $225,000 in late June, on the eve of trial.

“Jake and Amy would not approve,” quipped David Shanies, one of the lawyers who represented Ramsay and Vlastaras in their suit. “A group of New York City police officers arrested three young men for a crime they knew they did not commit . . . That wouldn’t be funny if it happened on a TV show.”





The city Law Department did not respond to a request for comment. The creators of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dan Goor and Michael Schur, did not return messages.

Peralta and Santiago (the real-life ones) could not be reached.





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