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| “ | My best cop... I never would've figured. | „ |
| ~ O'Farrell as he mistakenly believes he is corrupting Don Cragen |
Peter O'Farrell is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "The Blue Wall". He is a corrupt high-ranking official in the New York Police Department who is secretly taking bribes for a powerful group of drug dealers.
He was portrayed by the late Robert Lansing.
Early life[]
O'Farrell is a high-ranking official with the NYPD who has been with the department for more than 30 years. He rose up quickly through the department's hierarchy because of the political clout of his mentor, Chief William Wilson, who ultimately chose O'Farrell as his successor after retiring from the NYPD in order to run for Congress. O'Farrell did the same for his protégé, Don Cragen, moving him up the ranks until he became Captain of the NYPD's 27th precinct.
Unbeknowst to Cragen, however, O'Farrell was corrupt, taking bribes from a gang of Colombian drug dealers to look the other way as they sold their product; the dealers also had Wilson in their pocket. When three of these dealers were arrested along with the bankers who laundered their money, they paid Wilson $300,000 to get rid of two computer disks containing evidence of their crimes. Wilson split the money with O'Farrell, who then bribed retired police officer Albert McCrory and Detective Dennis Shearer to steal the disks and erase them before putting them back in the precinct's evidence locker.
In "The Blue Wall"[]
After the drug dealers and their bankers are acquitted at trial, Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone launches an investigation into how the evidence against them was destroyed, and suspects that O'Farrell had something to do with it. The NYPD's Internal Affairs Division (IAD) also suspects (wrongly) that Cragen is involved, so two of the officers under his command, Sergeant Max Greevey and Detective Mike Logan, have dinner with O'Farrell to find out what is going on. O'Farrell says that Stone and his boss, District Attorney Adam Schiff, are looking for "Irish cop scapegoats" to blame for their failure to convict the bankers, and that someone in their office probably erased the tapes on accident.
Greevey and Logan inspect the sign-in sheet at the property clerk's office and find that Cragen signed in twice the week the computer disks went missing. Cragen claims that he was transferring evidence for another detective, but IAD does not believe him and keeps investigating. Fortunately, Greevey and Logan discover that the bankers who were tried for money laundering all contributed to Wilson's campaign, and that McCrory took a bribe from a company owned by Wilson's wife, giving them enough evidence to arrest O'Farrell, McCrory, and Wilson for bribery and conspiracy. Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette discover Shearer's involvement by tapping his phone. They make a deal with him to testify against the other conspirators.
Stone and Robinette still need direct evidence against O'Farrell, so they reluctantly threaten to indict Cragen in order to get him to wear a wire to entrap O'Farrell. Cragen and O'Farrell meet at a departmental function, but O'Farrell does not say anything incriminating. Cragen suspects that O'Farrell is guilty, however, so he meets with him the next day, once again wearing a wire, and pretends to want a cut of the money in return for destroying the evidence against him. O'Farrell agrees, while admitting to bribing McCrory and accepting a bribe from Wilson. Cragen testifies against O'Farrell in court, and all three conspirators are found guilty of and imprisoned for bribery, conspiracy, and destroying evidence.
External links[]
- Peter O'Farrell on the Law & Order Wiki
