Falfurrias
police officer accused of sexually assaulting minor
By Ben Lloyd
A police officer placed on
suspension by the Falfurrias Police Department is accused of having a sexual
relationship with a minor.
24-year-old Jonathan Diaz was
picked up by the Texas Rangers on Monday.
He was suspended last week from
the Falfurrias Police Department pending the result of the investigation.
There are reports that a second
police officer was also suspended last week, however when we spoke with the
Texas Rangers they would not confirm nor deny that investigation.
Officer charged with sexually
assaulting woman who called for help: Forcing Change
By Ryllie Danylko, Northeast
Ohio Media Group
ND, Ohio -- A woman called
Cleveland police in November 2011 to report she was a victim of a crime, and
her night only got worse when the officer who responded sexually assaulted her,
according to a lawsuit she filed in 2012.
Det. Paul Jones, a 38-year
veteran of the Cleveland Division of Police, also faced criminal charges. He
was arrested and charged with gross sexual imposition in Cleveland Municipal
Court.
Jones' case was bound over to
Cuyahoga County court, where he reached a deal that saw him plead guilty to
charges of criminal trespass, dereliction of duty and assault. He received a
90-day suspended jail sentence and supervision.
The woman settled the lawsuit
with the city for $5,000.
The woman said she called
Cleveland police to report that she was a victim of an crime at her apartment.
When Jones arrived at her home, he began making sexually explicit comments,
according to the suit.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Northeast Ohio Media Group and
The Plain Dealer reviewed the details of nearly 70 lawsuits against Cleveland
officers that resulted in taxpayer payouts over the past decade. The lawsuits
alleged that officers used excessive force, made wrongful arrests or needlessly
escalated violence during encounters with citizens. Though the city admitted no
wrongdoing in settling many of the lawsuits, taken as a whole, the patterns
that emerge from the cases match closely with the patterns of police behavior
that were described in a U.S. Department of Justice investigation. The city has
declined the opportunity to discuss the individual cases in more detail. In
response to questions, the city released a statement contending that it
seriously considers all allegations of excessive force by officers. This,
according to the city, has resulted in a steady drop in the annual number of
incidents.
Jones exposed himself and
forced the woman's head toward his lap as she struggled to get away from him,
according to the complaint. The lawsuit doesn't say what happened next, but the
woman said she was a victim of a violent sexual assault.
Jones warned her not to tell
anyone about the incident, according to the suit.
In an answer to this complaint,
Jones denied the allegations.
The woman accused the city of
allowing Jones to continue serving on the force after the incident despite
knowing about his past misconduct. The city, she claims, didn't take any
meaningful corrective measures after Jones' October 2012 sentencing.
NYPD
cop wants his alleged misconduct barred from use in Google sex assault case
Police Officer Lukasz
Skorzewski is accused of trying to have sex with a rape victim, who he was
interviewing in a Seattle hotel room. He is a witness in the case of Google
engineer Justin Chan, who’s accused of raping a woman in 2014. But lawyers are
arguing about whether Skorzewski’s alleged wrongdoings should be used when he testifies
in Chan’s case.
BY SHAYNA JACOBS
The NYPD cop who called a woman
“my favorite victim” testified in a sex assault case Wednesday and fought to
keep details of his alleged misconduct from being disclosed in court, the Daily
News has learned.
Police Officer Lukasz
Skorzewski, who was demoted from detective to patrol officer after The News
exposed his bad behavior during a trip to Seattle to interview a rape victim,
was a witness in the case of a Google engineer charged with sex assault.
Justin Chan was accused of
raping a woman he met on the street in his East Village apartment in June 2014.
Skorzewski, then a detective in
the elite Special Victims Division, testified Wednesday about setting up a photo
lineup with Chan’s accuser.
But Skorzewski's lawyer Michael
Martinez showed up later to argue that his client should not be grilled about
his alleged wrongdoings in the Emerald City.
Prosecutors said they could not
offer Skorzewski, 31, immunity from potential prosecution and did not disclose
the status of any criminal probe into the cop's alleged dirty deeds.
Martinez said it would be
prejudicial to bring the issue into the Chan case as the Internal Affairs
Bureau investigation continues and while Skorzewski faces possible criminal
charges.
"Asking him to answer
questions about that puts him in a position that I'm not sure I can allow him
to go into," Martinez said about the Seattle incident, in which he
allegedly tried to have sex with a rape victim in a hotel room.
"The officer has made it
clear he wants this case to proceed,” Martinez added. “He believes in the work
he did in this case.”
But Chan's lawyer Kimberly
Summers argued the West Coast episode is relevant to Skorzewski's credibility
and should be fair game in his testimony.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice
Charles Solomon ordered the DA to turn over Skorzewski's personnel file to
Summers but has not yet ruled on whether she can cross-examine him about the
Seattle sleeze.
Chan's case is back on Monday
when Solomon could allow Summers to call the officer to testify again and grill
him on his role in the Seattle incident.
Skorzewski, a married father of
two, is expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination
if the questioning is allowed.
He and Lt. Adam Lamboy, 44,
traveled to Seattle in July 2013 to interview the alleged rape victim. The
woman said the two officers took her on a nine-hour drinking binge and later
Skorzewski tried to tear her clothes off in a hotel room.
They have been placed on
modified duty.
Neither have commented about
the incident.
Brownsdale
cop sent to prison for sex assault
Former Brownsdale cop sent to
prison for sex assault
Kay Fate,
kfate@postbulletin.com
AUSTIN — The former chief of
police in Brownsdale was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in prison
for assaulting a woman he met in a bar.
Jason Mindrup, 44, was convicted
of one count each of second- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct by a
Mower County jury on Oct. 30 — exactly a year to the day he was charged with
three felonies in the case.
Jurors acquitted Mindrup of
first-degree criminal sexual conduct after deliberating for five hours.
District Court Judge Jeffrey
Kritzer handed down a 90-month term for the second-degree count; no sentence
was pronounced for the lesser charge.
On Aug. 31, 2013, a woman
called law enforcement at about 2 a.m. to report a sexual assault.
The woman told authorities she
had been at a bar in Waltham earlier in the night with a male friend and also
had spoken to Mindrup. She and the friend left the bar and walked to a tractor
repair shop nearby, leaving her purse and cellphone at the bar. The woman said
Mindrup drove past the shop, then backed up, pulled into the back lot and
offered her a ride home.
Instead of taking her home, the
complaint says, Mindrup drove a couple miles out of town, got out of the truck
and undressed, then got back into the truck.
Mindrup "roughly
assaulted" her, the report says, and used force in other attempts. He
eventually got dressed and drove the woman back to the bar, which was closed.
The bartender let the woman in
to get her purse and described her as "crying and looking scared,"
according to the complaint, but wouldn't tell the bartender what happened.
Mindrup looked into the window of the bar, and the woman became more upset, the
complaint says. The bartender spoke to Mindrup, who said he was seeing if the
woman needed a ride home.
The victim left the bar, walked
to a nearby friend's house and called authorities.
Mindrup, who took the stand in
his own defense, said he was worried about the woman when he saw her near the
tractor shop and offered her a ride home. Mindrup told the jury the woman asked
to go to his house; instead, he drove a couple of miles out of town and parked
while he decided where to take her, then just took her back to the bar.
He denied assaulting her.
A DNA expert with the Minnesota
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension testified that saliva found on the victim's
breasts — while not "definitively" a match to Mindrup — likely
couldn't have come from anyone else.
The case was prosecuted by
former Olmsted County senior assistant attorney Julie Germann to avoid
conflicts of interest. As Brownsdale police chief, Mindrup often worked with
Mower County prosecutors.
