By ASHLEE REZIN Sun-Times Media Wire February 15, 2014 2:28PM
Nearly three years after they were charged with sexually
assaulting a woman while on duty, two former Chicago Police officers have
pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of official misconduct and each been
sentenced to two years of probation.
Paul Clavijo and Juan Vasquez, each 41, were charged with criminal
sexual assault and official misconduct after a 22-year-old woman said they
assaulted her in March 2011.
Clavijo resigned that year and Vasquez the following year,
according to a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
Court records show both men pleaded guilty Jan. 22 to official
misconduct involving battery, which is a felony. They did not admit to any
sexual offense and got no jail time.
The officers were in uniform when they offered the woman a ride
home in Wrigleyville, prosecutors said at the time. They said the woman had
been drinking and tried to get in the back seat of the marked squad car but
that Clavijo put her on his lap in the front seat and sexually assaulted her
while Vasquez went into a liquor store.
The woman “believed she could not say no to Clavijo’s sexual
advances and had to do whatever the police officer asked,” according to
prosecutors, who said in charging the officers that the woman drank and played
strip poker with them at her home in Rogers Park and that they then sexually
assaulted her.
A spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office did
not respond Saturday to a request for comment.