Prostitution Charge Dropped in
Case an Albany Journalist Called Retaliation
By JESSE McKINLEY
AUG. 9, 2015
ALBANY — In March 2012, just
blocks from the State Capitol, several law enforcement officers stormed into a
second-floor spa and arrested a woman, accusing her of soliciting money for
sexual acts. An invasive strip search was done, thousands of dollars were
seized and the woman, Min Liu, was soon charged with prostitution.
But it was the woman’s employer
at the Green Garden Asian Spa who provoked the uproar: Bin Cheng, the wife of
J. Robert Port, who was the investigations editor at The Times Union of Albany.
Almost as soon as Ms. Liu was
arrested, Mr. Port accused the police of targeting his wife’s business in
retaliation for a series of articles he had shepherded into the newspaper that
called into question the tactics and practices of an Albany County sheriff’s
drug unit.
“I already knew that this unit
was investigating my wife,” said Mr. Port, 59, who is also a former adjunct
journalism professor at Columbia University. “I knew they were watching her.”
Ms. Cheng, 46, was not at the spa
during the raid, nor was she ever charged with any crime, but the implication
that she was involved in nefarious activities hovered over Mr. Port’s family,
he said.
“This went on for three years, a
cloud over a person’s head and a cloud hanging over my wife’s business,” he
said, reiterating that he believed the arrest was related to “the work I was
doing with the Albany Times Union investigating local police.”
A city court judge in Albany last
week dismissed the charge, a misdemeanor, against Ms. Liu, after county
prosecutors concluded that the case should be dropped “in the interest of
justice.”
The order, by Judge Gary F.
Stiglmeier, outlined the reasons for the dismissal, including the lack of
witnesses “or other evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” other than the
testimony of the city detective who alleged the crime. That detective, Scott D.
Gavigan, had been working with the unit Mr. Port had helped investigate, and
was in the spa with Ms. Liu at the time of the sting.
Ms. Liu’s lawyer, Kevin A.
Luibrand, hailed the decision, which was made on July 28, as long overdue and
said that his client — a 56-year-old Chinese immigrant and grandmother with no
previous criminal record — had endured a cavity search during the arrest, and
“continued to experience significant distress as a result of the charges,”
including hindering her ability to find work.
In his legal filings and an
interview last week, Mr. Luibrand said there was no case against his client: No
“buy money” for the alleged sexual acts was found, nor had Detective Gavigan
produced a recording of the transaction he asserted had occurred. Mr. Luibrand
also said the police had at one point falsely suggested drug activity was
taking place at the spa.
“The overkill on this case was
profound,” he said.
Both Mr. Luibrand and Mr. Port
said they believed that the Albany police had arrested Ms. Liu, who always
asserted her innocence, because they mistook her for Mr. Port’s wife.
“They didn’t know one Chinese woman from
another,” Mr. Port said.
Steven A. Smith Jr., a spokesman
for the Albany Police Department, had no comment on the particulars of the
case, but suggested that it would approach such cases differently.
“If we had to take on one of
these operations in the future,” he said, “we would certainly weigh out our
investigatory options before making our decisions.”
A spokeswoman for David Soares,
the Albany County district attorney, said the decision to support the dismissal
came after evaluating the evidence and finding “significant proof problems.”
The drug unit that Mr. Port and
Brendan J. Lyons, a reporter, investigated was disbanded around the same time
as the raid at the Green Garden, according to Albany County Sheriff Craig
Apple. The raid also prompted an internal review. Sheriff Apple’s office did
not respond to requests for comment about the Green Garden case, the drug unit
or the findings of that internal investigation.
Mr. Luibrand said Ms. Liu, who
lives in Flushing, Queens, did not speak English fluently but was a longtime
aesthetician and was pleased that her name had been cleared. “She’s thrilled by
it, she’s happy,” he said.
Mr. Port, who left The Times
Union in 2013, said on Wednesday that his wife, who declined to be interviewed,
also felt relieved. He said that her business had expanded to four spas in the
capital region, with eight employees total.
Still, while he and Ms. Cheng
have tried to move on, Mr. Port said that the case had left him with even more
questions about law enforcement behavior.
“I think police need to behave
themselves,” he said. “And police need to be policed.”
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