In September, shocking accusations filtered out into the New York media about two NYPD detectives, based in Brooklyn, who allegedly arrested and raped an 18-year-old woman. The New York Daily News reported that the unidentified woman spoke through an attorney.
“I’m completely brutalized by the rape. My life is in shatters,” the young woman said through her attorney, Michael David. “Now every time I see any police, I’m in a panic.”
On Sept. 14, two narcotics officers, detectives Edward Martins and Richard Hall, were reportedly working undercover with their supervisor, Sgt. John Espey, in an unmarked Dodge minivan in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn. According to police statements, the two officers left their assigned area and then ended up “busting” a group of young people hanging out in Calvert Vaux Park around 8 PM. They only arrested one of the three teens, the suspected victim, for possessing marijuana and Klonopin (an anti-anxiety medication).
They only handcuffed the woman, telling her friends that they were taking her to the 60th Precinct on W. Eighth St. in Coney Island for processing.
Instead, Martins and Hall allegedly took her to a secluded spot about two blocks from the 60th Precinct stationhouse, where she says she was forced to perform a sex act on both cops.
The victim was then returned to her friend, at which point the friend took her to a hospital to have a rape kit administered. According to The Intercept, the victim’s attorney found it very suspicious how quickly an excuse seemed to be generated surrounding this event.
“What was strange,” said David, “was that within only two or three hours of me filing, there was a story leaked to the New York Post saying that the detectives were claiming that the sex they had with my client in custody was consensual. They hadn’t even been named yet.” The attorney told me that he believes “the police were trying to get ahead of the story.”
As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard points out, there is no such thing as “consent” in a scenario where you are in police custody. This is not a fact that can be argued with any legitimacy. The woman goes by the name “Anna Chambers,” but that is not her legal name, which is being kept confidential. The New York Post explains that things have been moving as frustratingly slow as you can imagine.
The detectives, Richard Hall and Eddie Martins, have had their guns and shields taken away and were reassigned to desk duty after the 18-year-old made the accusations that were first revealed in The Post last month.
If these two police officers met Ms. Chambers while off-duty in a social atmosphere and they all went to have a consensual sexual adventure together, then maybe you could say a move like this is simply an allegation of sexual assault. But according to all of the information at hand, these detectives have admitted to having sex with the young woman while she was in custody and they were supposed to be working. According to Chambers’ attorney and The Intercept, the rape kit that was administered shows that everybody is in agreement that all three people were involved in a sexual act. But here is where things become infuriating.
“The reason you have Miranda warnings is precisely because of the coercive effect of being in custody,” New York-based civil rights attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen told me. “The idea that you can’t give knowing and voluntary consent to answering questions, but you could to sex would be risible if it weren’t so horrifically nauseating.” Yet our current legal statutes fail to recognize this inherently coercive effect when it comes to on-duty rape claims.
Under New York penal law, there can be no consensual sex between corrections officers and prisoners in their charge, nor between a patient committed to a hospital and those charged with their supervision. Yet there is no such law for the police. While, as the NYPD spokesperson told me, “it is against department policy to have sex on duty,” the law does not preclude consensual sex between an arresting officer and a person in their custody.
Being “against department policy” is not being against the law, but this is the power dynamic that needs to be fully recognized by our laws and our law enforcement agencies.