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Wallkill, NY, Jan. 18 – New York state accused a small town of having several rogue police officers who repeatedly menaced, intimidated and sexually harassed citizens including several 16-year-old girls.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS suit seeks a federal monitor to watch over the Wallkill department while police officers are trained and the department is “professionalized,” according to state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
If successful, it would be the first time a federal monitor would be assigned to a New York state police department, a Spitzer spokesman said. Police departments have been placed under a federal overseer in New Jersey as a result of racial profiling accusations as well as in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Maryland and Ohio, said spokesman Marc Violette.
The civil action in federal court is aimed at the political leaders of the Orange County town 79 miles north of Manhattan, Spitzer argues, because they ignored repeated requests by citizens to stop the problem. About six members of the department that averaged about 25 officers during the period are accused of misconduct over at least two years, some using an unmarked car that officers called “the stealth car,” Spitzer said.
“We have a total breakdown of the government structure,” Spitzer said Thursday. “What is perhaps most egregious is the failure of the local government to respond.”
In one case last spring, Spitzer claims a 23-year-old woman was stopped for driving while intoxicated – a charge later dismissed by a judge. A police videotape showed she passed a sobriety check, but the suit says she was improperly taken back to the police station. There, she said the officer asked if she had a boyfriend, and “If you saw me at a bar, would you talk to me? ... These are the bars I hang out in.”
Spitzer said explicit solicitations followed into the next week, when the officer allegedly approached the woman in a bar and said he didn’t have to worry about a drunk driving charge: “That’s the advantage of being a cop, or dating one.”
Spitzer’s suit claims that police stopped women motorists often at night and on desolate roads to solicit dates, sexual favors or “simply for sport.” Sometimes, officers made sexually suggestive comments or implied that bogus charges could be dropped if the women dated them. Women said officers shone flashlights on their breasts and suggested to out-of-town women that they might want to stay in a local motel.
The suit also claims that police harassed women at their jobs and elsewhere. One woman was ordered to take some of her clothes off and was questioned about her sexual past. According to the suit, uniformed police officer repeatedly visited a restaurant and grabbed several 16-year-old waitresses around the waist, hips and thighs and made sexually suggestive comments. Parents complained to the town about the officer, but no action was taken.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WNBC/1203556.asp
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-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed
THE CIVIL RIGHTS suit seeks a federal monitor to watch over the Wallkill department while police officers are trained and the department is “professionalized,” according to state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
If successful, it would be the first time a federal monitor would be assigned to a New York state police department, a Spitzer spokesman said. Police departments have been placed under a federal overseer in New Jersey as a result of racial profiling accusations as well as in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Maryland and Ohio, said spokesman Marc Violette.
The civil action in federal court is aimed at the political leaders of the Orange County town 79 miles north of Manhattan, Spitzer argues, because they ignored repeated requests by citizens to stop the problem. About six members of the department that averaged about 25 officers during the period are accused of misconduct over at least two years, some using an unmarked car that officers called “the stealth car,” Spitzer said.
“We have a total breakdown of the government structure,” Spitzer said Thursday. “What is perhaps most egregious is the failure of the local government to respond.”
In one case last spring, Spitzer claims a 23-year-old woman was stopped for driving while intoxicated – a charge later dismissed by a judge. A police videotape showed she passed a sobriety check, but the suit says she was improperly taken back to the police station. There, she said the officer asked if she had a boyfriend, and “If you saw me at a bar, would you talk to me? ... These are the bars I hang out in.”
Spitzer said explicit solicitations followed into the next week, when the officer allegedly approached the woman in a bar and said he didn’t have to worry about a drunk driving charge: “That’s the advantage of being a cop, or dating one.”
Spitzer’s suit claims that police stopped women motorists often at night and on desolate roads to solicit dates, sexual favors or “simply for sport.” Sometimes, officers made sexually suggestive comments or implied that bogus charges could be dropped if the women dated them. Women said officers shone flashlights on their breasts and suggested to out-of-town women that they might want to stay in a local motel.
The suit also claims that police harassed women at their jobs and elsewhere. One woman was ordered to take some of her clothes off and was questioned about her sexual past. According to the suit, uniformed police officer repeatedly visited a restaurant and grabbed several 16-year-old waitresses around the waist, hips and thighs and made sexually suggestive comments. Parents complained to the town about the officer, but no action was taken.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/local/WNBC/1203556.asp
------------------
-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed
