A Union Scandal Landed Hundreds of NYPD Officers on a Secret Watchlist. That Hasn’t Stopped Some From Jeopardizing Cases.

One judge said she believed the testimony of a Bronx defendant’s 64-year-old mother more than that of the two New York City police officers who arrested him.

Another said she didn’t buy the testimony of an officer and his colleagues, concluding that they had stopped a car not because they’d seen its occupants break any laws but because it was driven by “three young men of color.”

A third jurist toyed with using the word “perjury” to describe the testimony of an officer who repeatedly contradicted himself, claiming, for example,...