Disgraced NYPD cop who took mistress on drunken joyride in cruiser dodges jail

A disgraced former NYPD Deputy Inspector has avoided jail after admitting to taking his mistress on a drunken joyride before crashing into a taxi cab.Paul Zangrilli pleaded guilty on Wednesday to drunk driving as well as covering up the incident and was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge, a $750 fine and a 90-day suspended license.Zangrilli smiled at his former lover, Nikole Rupple, as the pair sat next to each other at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse and heard their punishments for their 2022 drunken rampage.The pair had sunk 10 beers and 12 shots between them in the space of three hours at the American Whiskey bar near Penn Station before Zangrilli let Rupple get behind the wheel of his NYPD-issued cruiser at around 5:40 p.m.on August 15, 2022, an indictment from last year stated.Zangrilli was allowed to take an unmarked vehicle — a white Chevy Equinox — for use on official business on the day, ADA Samantha Dworkin told the court.After Rupple crashed into a cab, damaging both vehicles, the pair fled the scene without exchanging information, the court heard.They then stopped and Zangrilli got into the driver’s seat and drove off, before the cabbie caught up with their vehicle and flagged down a marked police car, who forced the pair to pull over, the court heard.Zangrilli, who was seeing Rupple while still married to his then-wife, tried to conceal evidence of the crash by attempting to bribe the driver of the cab he hit and calling the owner of the bar the pair had been at and asking him to delete their surveillance footage, court papers earlier revealed.“They nearly got away with it,” Dworkin said.Rupple was never identified as the driver and taxpayers were forced to foot the bill when the livery cab driver sued the city for $75,000, Dworkin said.Fearing “professional retribution,” lower-ranked officers didn’t come forward to testify against Zangrilli, she told the court.“That is a reminder of what this case is about,” she adde...