Donald Trump complaining about critical coverage says that “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt” as though the government will be correcting the press. He has it exactly backward, as it is the free press that corrects and straightens out corrupt government.

Look no further than the reporting of Daily News correspondents Graham Rayman, Rocco Parascandola and Tom Tracy who last month uncovered the NYPD overtime scandal that OT is being directed to a large number of cops at HQs, not police out in the field.

Their work blew open the dirty inside secrets, showing that the No. 1 highest earner among 35,000 uniformed cops was Lt. Special Assignment Quathisha Epps, who just happened to be an aide to Jeff Maddrey, who was chief of the department until a few days ago.

Exposed, Epps put in for retirement on Dec. 16 and two days later she was suspended. She then charged that Maddrey had been demanding sex in exchange for the hundreds of thousands of dollars of OT she had pocketed. That’s when Maddrey quit.

The salacious details ascribed to Maddrey are horrid. And so is the scandal that OT is apparently being funneled, not to crime fighting and hardworking cops freezing their behinds off patrolling the streets and subways, but to paperpushers like Epps with cushy jobs back at 1 Police Plaza. There are hundreds of OT recipients who need to be carefully reviewed.

The city Department of Investigation is probing, as is the Manhattan district attorney, as are federal prosecutors. Everyone except the World Court it seems. As they all should be, for this is theft from the taxpayers and theft from ordinary cops keeping us all safe.

New Commissioner Jessie Tisch has already dumped NYPD Chief of Internal Affairs Miguel Iglesias, who should have found out about this and didn’t, or even worse, did know and let it slide. Tisch, who is in the midst of a cleanup, may also be investigating a crime scene.

And back to what Trump is spouting about; this cascade started with the vigorous free press of our reporters and their competitors at the other news outlets covering the NYPD. The system as envisioned in the First Amendment, that the government cannot interfere with the freedom of the press, is working precisely as the Founders thought.

As for Maddrey, this guy had skated on ethical charge after ethical charge, always protected by the old boy’s network. We find out now that he was sworn in as a licensed New York State attorney in September. That means he won approval from the court system’s Committee on Character and Fitness. And he managed to complete law school and study for the bar (which he passed this spring) while also being the NYPD’s only 4-star chief, the top uniformed job. Was he also collecting OT along the way?

With the ouster of Maddrey and Iglesias, Tisch’s crackdown on OT is rightly starting at the top. She has clean hands, having just arrived a month ago. Anyone who was wrongly dipping into the OT kitty for themselves or others has to be found and exiled from the high command, if not fired outright.

Overtime is sometimes a necessary expense, but it must be used for the public safety function of the NYPD, not to fatten the wallets of the undeserved. That is the mission of the NYPD, just as it is the mission of the Daily News and the rest of the press to watch them.

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