Upon exposing the illegal acts committed by some high-ranking NYPD officers, Sánchez was arrested on the basis of false allegations which were highly publicized by the news media, then subsequently refuted.

[2] Sánchez attempted to enlist, but for reasons unknown to him he was not accepted by any of the four military branches at the induction center at Whitehall Street.

[1] Sánchez served with the Port Authority from January 1971 to October 1973, during which time he discovered that his application for the NYPD had once again been rejected because of a technicality.

The neighborhoods in the precinct are Hamilton Heights, Sugar Hill, and West Harlem, all of which, during Sánchez's tenure, had a lot of drug use, gang activity, and turf wars.

[2] When Sánchez reported this situation to the NYPD Internal Affairs Division (IAD), they "wired" him with a recording device, with the supposed intent of gathering proof of his accusations against the lieutenant and the captain.

However, upon learning of the situation, the lieutenant and the captain transferred Sánchez to another Court Division in the Bronx, and the IAD investigation was quietly shelved.

The witnesses against him were drug dealers he and his partner arrested in 1982, and who were promised to have their indictments dropped if they agreed to testify against Sánchez.

This statute has since been rescinded, and the NYPD police commissioner no longer has sole discretion to make such a decision, without a departmental hearing.

This was the hearing that was denied to Sánchez, for fear that it would open "a can of worms" into how Sanchez was falsely accused by members of the department and the special state prosecutor.

"[3] In 2008, the New York Daily News wrote that his tenure at the NYPD was marked by getting double-crossed by the Internal Affairs Division, which wired him up to catch a crooked lieutenant and captain; his arrest on the allegations of a drug dealer; and a conviction for assault that was overturned; and an unsuccessful bid for reinstatement.

According to the interview Washburn tried to help Sánchez by writing letters to the then Special State Prosecutor Charles Hynes (who went on to serve as the Brooklyn District Attorney for 24 years), Judge Dennis Edwards, who presided over Sánchez' trial, and NYPD Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, who refused to reinstate Sanchez, even after he was exonerated.

The reason given for the refusal was that Sánchez was a whistleblower who broke the Police Code of Silence when he reported his lieutenant and captain for corruption.

[8] The injustice that Sánchez went through was the subject of a Baltimore Post Examiner article titled "Super Cop: Badge 3712, NYPD Officer Joe Sanchez’ tragic days" published on April 27, 2016.

The article was written by Doug Poppa, a United States Army Military Police Veteran and former law enforcement officer, criminal investigator.

[9] Sánchez was featured in the documentary "The Opera House" by Susan Froemke which played in selected theaters on January 13, 2018.

According to the New York Daily News, Sánchez "has put it all down in an autobiography called True Blue, that is as rough around the edges as the kid who grew up in the South Bronx in the 1950s and made it to the NYPD after a tour in Vietnam and brief stint as a Port Authority cop.