Hit man cops

Some New York City police officers have been accused in the past of taking payola from bootleggers, kickbacks from pimps, hush money from gamblers and look-the-other-way dough from drug dealers.

There have been officers paid by organized crime figures in exchange for tipping them off to investigations or upcoming busts.

But criminal justice experts said they'd never heard of a case in the city like the one brought last week against Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, one-time NYPD detectives charged with misusing the authority of their badges to become mob hit men.