8 replies to this topic

[Jacki O.]

2 city officers face allegations of raping an intoxicated woman. From the NYTimes

"Two police officers have been assigned to desk duty while prosecutors and the police investigate a complaint that at least one of them raped an intoxicated woman after they escorted her into her apartment in the East Village three months ago, the police said on Sunday.

Footage from a nearby bar’s video surveillance camera shows the two officers helping the woman into her building on Dec. 7 and returning twice during the next two hours, according to the bar owner, who provided the video to investigators."


LAME

[Jacki O.]

update on this case

[donald]

wow

[fatguyaz]

i hope he was protected while he served.



c'mon.

[glitterbot]

That is just so doubly horrible. Imagine you think you are doing all the right things. You get drunk, so you take a cab home and ask cops to walk you to your door, to try and protect yourself. Just horrible.

[Jacki O.]

the officers were acquitted.

fucked up:

Two New York City Police Officers Acquitted of Rape
John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Two New York City police officers on Thursday were found not guilty of raping a drunken woman who had been helped into her apartment by the officers while on patrol.

The verdict brings to an end a criminal case that drew outrage across the city when the officers were indicted in 2009, and provides some measure of vindication for the officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata.

The officers were convicted of three counts of official misconduct for entering the woman’s apartment, but the jury found them not guilty of all other charges, including burglary and falsifying business records.

The Police Department said on Thursday that it would begin the process of removing them from the force — up till now, they have been suspended with pay.

The commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said the guilty verdicts “involved violations of the officers’ oaths of office and as a result warrant immediate termination from the Police Department, and we will pursue that today.”

During the trial, the officers both admitted to violating their duties on the night in question; Officer Moreno testified that he cuddled with the drunken woman in her bed while she wore nothing but a bra.

Both officers could face up to a year in jail on each count when they are sentenced on June 28 before Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Appearing tense and tight faced in front of the courthouse, Officer Moreno said he was not angry.

“I’m glad it’s over,” he said. “It’s a lesson and a win.”

When a reporter asked Officer Moreno what he meant by “a lesson,” his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, interjected to say, “Well, we’ll just leave it at that.”

The case presented a formidable challenge for prosecutors: there was no DNA evidence suggesting that either officer had committed a sexual act, and the victim was admittedly drunk and had only a foggy recollection of the night in question.

As the verdict was read, Officer Mata looked straight ahead, while Officer Moreno cast his eyes downward, placing his fingertips on his lips.

After the verdict was delivered, Officer Moreno’s mother, Aida Moreno-Ruiz, called a relative from her cellphone. “Hey, Freddy,” she said. “It’s over. It’s over. Not guilty.”

She said in an interview that she knew that her son was “not capable of doing something so ugly.”

“Thank God it’s over and the truth came out,” she said.

Prosecutors had accused Officer Mata, 29, of standing guard while Officer Moreno had sex with the woman.

After initially helping the woman into her apartment, the officers were captured by surveillance cameras as they re-entered the woman’s East Village building three times.

Officer Moreno, 43, testified during the nearly two-month-long trial that he was a recovering alcoholic and had developed a rapport with the woman that night, when she confided in him that her friends were mad at her because she drank too much. They flirted, he sang Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” to her and she actually came onto him, wearing nothing but a bra, he said. He testified that he kissed the woman on the forehead and snuggled with her in her bed, but insisted that they did not have sex.

But the woman, now 29 and living in California, told a much different story. She said she did not have a drinking problem and would never have said something like that to the officer.

The woman, who was drinking heavily at a Brooklyn bar while celebrating a job promotion, conceded that she had blacked out on many details of the evening. Still, she testified to vivid memories of hearing police radios crackling and Velcro tearing open, of feeling her tights being rolled down, and then of being penetrated as she lay dazed, face down on her bed.

After the verdict, Officer Moreno said the woman was “mistaken and confused.”

He added, “my intention was from the beginning just to help her.”

When the officers were indicted in 2009, Mr. Kelly, who typically does not speak about pending cases against his officers, broke protocol to make a statement.

“It is outrageous that officers summoned to assist a woman would end up allegedly taking advantage of her,” the commissioner said at the time. “The public needs to know that the police will be there to protect them, and they can know that.”

On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg released a statement saying, “There were very serious charges raised during this trial, and now that it’s over they can be addressed by the Police Department’s strict review.”

When she testified last month, the woman, who has a $57 million lawsuit pending against the city and the officers, broke down several times while on the witness stand when recalling what she said happened to her.

“I couldn’t believe that two police officers who had been called there to help me had instead raped me and left me face down in a pool of vomit in my bed to die,” she said during her testimony.

Although more than 35 witnesses testified, the trial was highlighted by combative, dramatic cross-examination between Coleen Balbert, an assistant district attorney, and the officers. Ms. Balbert attempted to portray the officers as presenting self-serving stories to conceal what they did to the woman.

One crucial piece of prosecution evidence was a secretly recorded conversation days later between the woman and Officer Moreno. In the recorded conversation, Officer Moreno told the woman that he had worn a condom, but only after he had denied numerous times that he had sex with her. His lawyers argued that he lied to her about wearing a condom because she had threatened to make a scene in his precinct station house.

Officer Moreno also made other statements during the conversation that suggested he had had sex with the woman.

Although the defense never conceded that the two had sex, a central point of argument in the case was whether the woman was too drunk to consent to sex. Under the prosecutors’ theory of rape, they had to prove that the woman was physically unable to consent to sex, meaning that she was either unconscious or unable to speak when she was penetrated.

Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own as she entered the building in front of the officers as evidence that she was conscious and able to communicate. They also contrasted what the woman told some friends shortly after the alleged rape — that she thought she was raped — with the certainty that she was expressing on the witness stand. Her spotty recollection of that night, the defense said, was enough to raise reasonable doubt over whether she was raped.

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that sucks. i hope she wins the civil suit. so fucked up.

[differently biotic]

I hope she wins the civil suit as well.

reading that made me sick to my stomach.

[Jacki O.]

and those "officers" need to be fired asap and never re-hired in any kind of law enforcement manner unless it's as a security guard at the city dump

[donald]

I remember this story from awhile ago and am saddened by the outcome. It seemed very obvious even at the beginning of this that the officers were in the wrong.


sadly, it's not surprising.