Irwindale
cop sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting woman
Married
NYPD cop accused of kissing, groping rape victim after booze-filled night in
Seattle
Milan
cop fired after sexual assault arrest
Cop
fired for exposing policy where police ‘had sex with prostitutes before
arresting them’
Woman
Says She Was Victim of Cop's Obsession
Irwindale
cop sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting woman
Irwindale police officer was sentenced to
prison for sexually assaulting a woman during a traffic stop.
By VERONICA ROCHA
David Paul Fraijo, 37, was
arrested in March after prosecutors said he stopped a female driver in
October 2012 and asked to see her
driver’s license. After she told him she didn’t have a license, prosecutors
said Fraijo ordered the woman to park on a nearby street, where he sexually
assaulted her.He pleaded no contest in October to oral copulation under color
of authority and sexual battery by restraint. Fraijo was also ordered to
register as a sex offender for life.After sentencing, Fraijo was taken into
custody, according to the LosAngeles County district attorney’s office.
Married
NYPD cop accused of kissing, groping rape victim after booze-filled night in
Seattle
Detective Lukasz Skorzewski was
investigating the rape of a 24-year-old woman when he flew to Seattle, drank with
her all night and got physical with her in a hotel room, the college student
alleges.
BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA , TINA
MOORE
A married detective assigned to
investigate the rape of a 24-year-old woman has been booted from the Manhattan
Special Victims Division after flying to Seattle, drinking with her all night —
and then allegedly trying to tear her clothes off in a hotel room.
Hours before the disturbing
encounter, the college student alleges, Detective Lukasz Skorzewski — in the
midst of a nine-hour drinking frenzy — looked at her and said, “You’re my
favorite victim.”
Skorzewski’s boss, Lt. Adam
Lamboy, was also transferred from the elite sex crimes unit, though it’s not
clear if it had anything to do with the woman’s claims. Lamboy, who also made
the cross-country trek to Seattle, was present during an interview with the
rape victim, but didn’t have any physical contact with her.
Sources said Lamboy was bounced
to the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in May. Skorzewski was knocked
down from a detective to a patrol officer and moved to the 114th Precinct in
Astoria, Queens, last week.
NYPD officials said Thursday
that the Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating the allegations. A
spokeswoman wouldn’t say why Lamboy, 44, and Skorzewski, 31, were still on the
job.
“I didn’t want to ruin his
life. I just wanted somebody to know that this happened,” the woman told the
Daily News on Thursday. “He was supposed to be my protector.”
The sordid tale began Jan. 13,
2013, when the woman, who attends college in New York City, reported a rape to
Skorzewski of the Manhattan Special Victims Division. She told him she was
raped by a man at his Union Square apartment after a night of drinking.
He was supposed to be my
protector.
Skorzewski and Lamboy flew to
the coffee capital to interview her in July of that year, police sources said.
The young woman characterized
Skorzewski as an officer still earning his detective badge. She was surprised
at how young he was, and thought he was cute.
The two officers interviewed
her in an office on July 5, but she said she contacted them the next day
because she had questions.
The cops met her at a pier
dressed in street clothes around 3 p.m. and asked her to drink with them and
another woman who was with Lamboy, she claims. She declined, at first. But the
two cops insisted and Lamboy even assured her that she would be “safe with us.”
At around 12:30 a.m., she
realized she’d left her car someplace else and the men offered to let her stay
at their hotel. The other woman had gotten into a fight with Lamboy and stormed
out.
The trio headed to the hotel.
At first, she and Skorzewski sat outside because she wasn’t feeling well. Then,
she said they went up to his room.
The woman recalled Skorzewski
took care of her and made sure she was OK. He told her, “You’re really cool.
No, you’re awesome.”
The aspiring detective let her
have the bed and he slept on a couch all night, but she said the platonic
relations didn’t last past breakfast.
In the morning, she says
Skorzewski asked her if he could lie down and put his arm around her. Then he
asked if he could kiss her.
She froze, outraged at the
suggestion.
He was married with two kids,
she thought. And he was investigating her initial rape case. She said no — but
then they started getting physical with each other.
She said she told him she
needed to leave her clothes on. Skorzewski laughed, she recalled. She had also
told the man who raped her that she needed to keep her clothes on.
Skorzewski was aggressive, she
said.
“He really felt me up, tried to
get his hands down my pants,” she told The News. “He was trying to put his
hands down my pants or work them up my shorts.”
She said she participated but
then ended it. She got in the shower alone.
Once Skorzewski returned to New
York, the two maintained a relationship over the phone, she said. Eventually he
stopped calling and she worried that his wife had found out what happened.
“He should have been fired,” a
police source familiar with the case said. “The woman was already in a fragile
emotional state.”
NYPD Chief Kim Royster said the
department’s Internal Affairs Bureau was still investigating the alleged
incidents in Seattle. The woman said she reported the detective by writing a
letter to a friend in the department.
Min Um-Mandhyan, a spokeswoman
at the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, said victims who
experience trauma may have impaired judgment.
“It looks like he took
advantage of his authority and the situation,” she said. “He gained her trust.”
Lamboy was transferred because
of changes in the NYPD’s top brass and because he was under investigation for
allegedly taking overtime he hadn’t earned, another source said.
The officers involved couldn’t
be reached.
Records show Skorzewski, who
was promoted to detective this past Feb. 28, made a base salary of $83,802 and
$117,588 with overtime that year.
The most recent records
available show Lamboy made $115,217 a year base salary in 2013 and a total of
$181,818 that year with overtime.
Lamboy got the police
commissioner’s Theodore Roosevelt Award in 2008 after getting into a car
accident that left him severely injured.
He supervised investigators on
the notorious Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexual
assault of a maid at the Sofitel New York Hotel on May 14, 2011. The case fell
through because of issues in the maid’s credibility.
Milan
cop fired after sexual assault arrest
By Devon Armijo
MILAN, N.M. —The Milan Police
Department said it has fired Officer James Watters.
Waters was one of two officers
accused in an alleged sexual assault. He was only on the force for eight
months.
New Mexico State Police said
Watters and two other men with law enforcement connections picked up a
20-year-old woman to go drinking on Christmas Eve. The other two men were
identified as Grants police Sgt. Jessie Nieto and former security officer for
the Cibola County Sheriff's Department Jessie Terrazaz.
State police said the group
drank at Grants High School, and the victim claimed the men wanted her to
perform oral sex or possibly have a threesome or foursome. She told them she
didn’t want to.
State police agents said Nieto
told the group he wanted to go home. Police said the other three stayed out
after Nieto was dropped off.
According to the statement of
probable cause, the victim told police she was brought to the New Mexico State
University’s campus in Grants. There she was given more alcohol and was
sexually assaulted, police said.
Police interviewed Watters at
his home on Christmas Day for several hours.
Cop
fired for exposing policy where police ‘had sex with prostitutes before
arresting them’
Harry Readhead
A police officer has been fired
after he exposed a department policy which apparently let cops have sex with
prostitutes before arresting them.
Sgt. Don Paul Bales of Fort Smith
Police Department in Arkansas reported an incident to his superiors and to his
lawyers where he said an undercover officer paid a prostitute $150 to engage in
a sex act and then arrested her afterwards.
But Sgt. Bales was shocked when
Chief Kevin Lindsey dismissed him from the force, saying he ‘violated
department policy’ by naming the officer in question – despite his written
statement being protected by attorney-client privilege.
Lindsey then said that Sgt.
Bales had in fact violated eight rules, including not being truthful, giving
false testimony and revealing confidential information. Furthermore, he said
the undercover officer’s alleged sex act with the prostitute was ‘in accordance
with department policy’ – despite being a crime itself.
The termination of Sgt. Bales
has been upheld on appeal for the Fort Smith Civil Service Commission – twice.
Woman
Says She Was Victim of Cop's Obsession
By MONICA PAIS
(CN) - A police officer infatuated with a
young woman he met during a landlord-tenant dispute tried to have her committed
after she rejected his attentions, a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County claims.
In her complaint, Kirenia Cardidad Figuera
says she met Officer Joshua Zacharias when he responded to a domestic dispute
call at her mother's apartment. Figuera says at the time, both she and her
sister lived with her mother, but neither contributed money toward the living
expenses in the home.
During the investigation that followed,
Zacharias allegedly told Figuera that because she'd lived in her mother's home
for more than 24 hours, the conflict amounted to a landlord-tenants dispute,
and that she'd have to find somewhere else to live.
Figuera says she and her sister gladly
accepted Zacharias offer to help them move to a new apartment the next day, but
from virtually that time on, her interaction with the officer took a disturbing
turn.
At the time, the young woman says, she had
only recently broken up with her boyfriend of six years, and they were still
trying to work out their issues. While Zacharias was still at the apartment,
Figuera invited her ex over to see the new place.
By then, she says, Zacharias had
overstayed his welcome, and when her ex-boyfriend did indeed arrive at the
apartment, "Zacharias began yelling uncontrollably at him." Moments
later, Zacharias allegedly escalated the confrontation by pulling a gun on the
ex-boyfriend and chasing him from the premises.
Figuera describes herself as startled by
the alleged incident, and says she was even more surprised when Zacharias went
back to his police cruiser, gathered some belongings, and announced he wanted
to stay the night.
Figuera says she responded by telling
Zacharias she wasn't interested in having a relationship with him.
But this, she claims, only inspired him to
become more aggressive in his pursuit of her. Initially, Zacharias called her
several times a day, and after she stopped answering his calls, he began to
call her sister, asking about Figuera's activities, the complaint says.
As
time went on, the lawsuit says, Zacharias became more involved in the family's
life -- even paying the mother's utility bill. But Figuera says just wasn't
interested in the officer and continued to try to make that clear to him.
"At one point, Defendant Zacharias
sent a Facebook message to Plaintiff's sister referring to her (Plaintiff's
sister) as his sister in law, discussing how heartbroken he felt over
Plaintiff's refusal to engage in a romantic relationship," the complaint
says. "Plaintiff asserts that Defendant Zacharias's verbiage, referring to
Plaintiff as his ex-wife after only knowing her for a few days, exemplifies the
obsessive infatuation Defendant Zacharias had with Plaintiff."
Figuera says the situation came to a head
on December 13, 2011, when she stopped at a Hess gas station near her apartment
to use the ATM machine. While inside, she says, Zacharias showed up in his
police cruiser and waited for her to come out.
He then pulled her over as she left the
gas station and "began a verbal altercation with Plaintiff over the fact
that he would be a better man" for her.
Figuera says the officer arrested her for
"allegedly being irrational," issued her citations for minor
violations, and then had her transferred to a local mental hospital.
"Defendant Zacharias told Plaintiff:
that's what you get bitch," the complaint says.
Figuera says the staff at the Citris
Mental Institute found no basis for her institutionalization, and released her
within hours of her arrival.
She
says she next encountered Zacharias in traffic court, where she was found
guilty of offenses ranging from having unlawfully tinted windows to blocking
the right-of-way. Figuera says the court's decision was based on a series of
false statements made by the officer, and that the court's findings were later
thrown out with Zacharias Facebook messages and other alleged statements were
brought to the attention of the state attorney's office.
Figuera seeks unspecified compensatory
damages on claims of negligence, negligent retention, malicious prosecution,
false arrest and imprisonment, and civil rights violations.
She is represented by Bram Gechtman of
Miami, Fla.
