An NYPD Officer Says “Highway Therapy” Was His Punishment For Ticketing The Wrong People

An NYPD officer claims ‘highway therapy’ was used after he ticketed city staff.
A lawsuit alleges senior officials sent him to Staten Island over a bruised ego.
He says he lost overtime, missed a promotion, and later had to move homes.

Commuting is what many see as a necessary evil. Employees are rarely paid for it, yet they spend hours of their lives each week doing it. According to one NYPD officer, leadership allegedly assigned him a two-hour commute and called it “highway therapy” after he claims he ticketed the wrong people. Failing to recognize one of the department’s rising stars may have also contributed to what he describes as his punishment.

A new lawsuit against the NYPD filed in New York Supreme Court accuses former Chief of Department John Chell, former Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry, and Transit Chief Joseph Gulotta of retaliating against Schwartz. Highway therapy, a tactic reported by some sources to be normalized inside the NYPD, is at the center of the case.

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According to NY Streets Blog that first reported the story, highway therapy is a practice of reassigning an officer to a faraway post, effectively leaving them with an expensive, miserable commute. In Schwartz’s case, that meant moving him from Queens to Staten Island, a trip the lawsuit says could stretch beyond two hours each way.

The trouble allegedly started in September 2023 when Daughtry walked into the 109th Precinct in Queens. Schwartz says he didn’t recognize him and therefore didn’t call the room to attention. Another officer then explained to Schwartz who Daughtry was.

Three days later, Schwartz says an intoxicated Chell called him late at night, asked where he lived, and then allegedly ordered his transfer to Staten Island almost immediately.

Disciplinary Actions Disputed

Emily let me clue you into something that has been a standing order for decades – No Doctors, Nurses, teachers and other city agencies. Since I was the Chief of Dept -I altered this to add , Any friend of @sidrosenberg19 was a friend of ours – free pass for Sid’s friends. I did…

— John M Chell (@JohnMChell) March 25, 2026

Once Schwartz made it to his new post, which was reportedly sticky to begin with, as they’re not supposed to happen over the phone, things took another turn for the worse. Schwartz wrote tickets for illegally parked cars outside of a school in Staten Island. It was later determined, according to the lawsuit, that those cars were owned by teachers.

That detail matters because Chell has publicly stated on X that he maintains a standing order directing officers not to issue tickets to certain groups, including doctors, nurses, teachers, and other city agencies.

Schwartz says he was stripped of patrol duties, denied overtime, shoved into a windowless office, and eventually blocked from a promotion to captain. The lawsuit claims Chell even told Schwartz, “I would let you rot in Staten Island,” before later sitting on the promotion board that rejected him.

Schwartz was eventually promoted in September 2025, but only after more than a year of delays. By then, he claims the financial hit was severe enough that he had to sell his house in Queens and move to Staten Island. From this point forward, it’s unclear how the lawsuit will play out.