Michael Lin was fired from the State Police in September 2025 — after an investigation that revealed that he skipped an August 2024 patrol shift in the bridges and tunnels unit to visit a strip club in New Jersey and get arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, as Streetsblog first reported in May.
In April 2025, in the midst of that investigation, Lin applied to the Port Authority. Here’s where one bureaucrat’s left hand didn’t know what the right was doing: As part of its background check process, the Port Authority asked the State Police about Lin’s employment.
The State Police said that Lin was, indeed, an active trooper. But the State Police never said anything about Lin’s arrest in New Jersey on that hot August night, or the subsequent internal affairs investigation that was unearthing numerous allegations of misconduct and ended up getting Lin fired and permanently decertified.
A spokesperson for the State Police told Streetsblog that the agency was simply following New York State law — which makes it difficult for anyone outside the orchard to know about the bad apples.
“The Port Authority did not request disciplinary records,” spokesperson Beau Duffy said. “If the Port Authority had requested disciplinary records, this case would not have been disclosed without Lin’s authorization since it was still pending.” Shortly after Lin applied to work at the Port Authority, New Jersey authorities ended up dropping their criminal case against him.