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Ex-NYPD cops dodge jail time for sex with suspect inside police van in plea deal despite Brooklyn DA
A pair of disgraced ex-city cops dodged jail time Thursday for having sex with a teenage suspect inside an NYPD van despite the Brooklyn district attorney’s ardent opposition to the sweetheart deal.
Eddie Martins, 39 and Richard Hall, 34, pleaded guilty to bribe receiving and official misconduct after engaging in intercourse and oral sex with the 18-year-old woman as the predatory police officers were on duty in Brooklyn South Narcotics on Sept. 15, 2017, prosecutors said.
The pair were initially charged with rape despite their claims that the sex was consensual. That charge was dropped earlier this year amid questions about the alleged victim’s credibility.
“These defendants engaged in a shocking abuse of power which they finally acknowledged,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. “While I would have preferred to see them serve prison time, they are no longer members of our police department and with (their) pleas are convicted felons.”
The two cops, who faced a maximum of seven years in prison, will instead receive sentences of five years probation at their Oct. 10 sentencing. The officers resigned from the department prior to a scheduled NYPD internal trial.
Their DNA was recovered from the woman and a surveillance video showed her leaving the police van roughly 40 minutes after the officers pulled her car over.
But the prosecution crumbled as trial approached, with the district attorney acknowledging the woman “made a series of false, misleading and inconsistent statements about the facts of this case.” Some of the bogus tales were told under oath, authorities acknowledged.
Defense attorneys were accused of smearing the victim in their efforts to get charges dropped, although the cops’ lawyers insisted they were focused on a lack of credible evidence against their clients rather than the woman’s character.
A call to her lawyer for comment on the plea deal was not immediately returned Thursday.
According to authorities, the two defendants were on the job inside a Dodge Caravan when they left their post in a buy-and-bust operation and drove to a park in Gravesend. Martins and Hall arrested the woman there after a traffic stop where she was behind the wheel of a car, with the suspect acknowledging that she was carrying marijuana and two Klonopin pills.
The driver was handcuffed, arrested and taken into the police van — where Martins had intercourse with the woman before she performed a sexual act on Hall, prosecutors said.
The cops then released the teenager, who goes by the name Anna Chambers on social media, without ever reporting the incident to their supervisor or anyone else.
DA Gonzalez noted that New York state has since passed a law prohibiting cops from having sex with people in custody, even if they claim the suspect was a willing participant — as Hall and Martins did.
