A city cop could be singing the blues after getting busted for a drunken outburst aboard a plane in Canada — and allegedly failing to inform his NYPD bosses — but the public may never know.
Officer Clinton Wike, who moonlights as an R&B singer, was arrested March 15, 2015, after performing at the Sound Academy in Toronto. The Queens cop, who has 12 years on the force, was accused of public intoxication.
Canadian officials claim Wike — who has sold over 1 million albums and performed with Mary J. Blige and Stevie Wonder — was loud, boisterous and too drunk to fly when he was pulled off a plane bound for New York.
Wike appeared Wednesday at a department trial and could lose up to 15 vacation days.
“He had his shield out, showing it to everyone,” Toronto Constable Andrew Grove testified at the hearing at 1 Police Plaza. “We escorted him away from the plane and rebooked him on a flight for the next day. He was joking, telling people that he had been taken off the plane because he had 20 kilos of coke in his bag.”
Grove said he and his partner helped Wike reschedule his flight and took him to a nearby tram so he could go to a hotel and dry out, but the NYPD cop never left the airport. He was found noticeably drunk 20 minutes later “leaning at a 45-degree angle against a cement pillar,” Grove said.
“Everybody take a picture!” Wike screamed to those around him, according to Grove. “I’m getting locked up for 20 years!”
Grove brought Wike to a hotel next to the airport so he could “sleep it off,” but Wike balked when he heard about the $259-a-night rate.
“Lock me up for free!” he screamed, according to Canadian officials.
So Grove did, giving Wike a summons for public intoxication when he was released eight hours later and driven back to the airport. Wike ultimately paid a $65 fine online.
Wike claims he was not drunk — and reported the summons to the NYPD once he landed back in New York, but the Toronto police had already beaten him to the punch, he said.
The cop crooner said he routinely goes to Toronto to perform. He admitted having two beers and a shot of Hennessy at an airport bar once he learned his flight would be delayed for two hours.
After the bar, he and his friends, who are also singers, spent the rest of their time working on a new song, but were not being loud or boisterous, Wike said.
“We’re songwriters,” he added. “We were writing down melodies and going through harmonies.”
Wike said his music, like his new song “Let’s Just Be Friends” — available at Buddywike.mobi — is about building bridges and connections.
“It’s not gangster rap or anything like that,” he said.
Wike said he wasn’t drunk when he got yanked off the plane, and was not waving around his badge, which he had left in his locker with his firearm.
“I did not feel that I was intoxicated at all,” he said. “I was absolutely fit for duty.”
Wike refuted the constable’s claims that he was yelling out to people — but admitted that he didn’t want to spend more than $300 for what would only be an eight-hour hotel stay.
According to the NYPD Patrol Guide, an officer must be fit for duty at all times, unless they are on sick leave.
Wike’s attorney Craig Hayes said no one at the airport stopped the officer from getting on the plane — proving that he was sober enough to fly.
When a flight attendant asked him to get off the plane, he did so without hesitation.
“He must have been the most polite drunk in the history of drunks,” said Hayes, who said that when the NYPD accuses its officers with being unfit for duty, the charges are “selective at best.”
“The (NYPD) is saying he was unfit for duty because he had two beers in another country a full day before he was scheduled to go to work,” Hayes said. “It’s a farce.”
An NYPD assistant trial commissioner will send his recommendation for punishment to the police commissioner, who will render a final decision.
The public may never learn that decision now that the department is shielding officers behind a statute, Civil Rights Law 50-A, that limits disclosure of police personnel records.
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