A few months before they were accused of raping a drunk East Village woman in her apartment, the two police officers charged (and found not guilty) in the incident had another questionable encounter with an inebriated young woman in the neighborhood, the Village Voice reports. The unidentified woman, who was 21 at the time, was interviewed by investigators looking into the rape charges, but the jurors never heard about the incident in court. Here are the broad strokes:
In the August incident, Mata and Moreno were accused of being verbally abusive to a woman, calling her a "cunt" and a "bitch," among other things. They pushed her around, causing scratches and bruises on her wrists. They refused to take her criminal complaint for theft. They refused to identify themselves. They detained her twice on specious grounds, never read her Miranda rights, held her for several hours, and let her go without explaining why she had been arrested.
The woman says her trouble started after a bartender at Cheap Shots refused to serve her and a friend, and then some teenagers stole her phone and wallet outside. When Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata rolled up, they refused to take her complaint, and she cursed them out. She says they then handcuffed her and threw her in the back of the squad car, at which point Mata removed a sanitary napkin from her tote bag and stated, "Is this why you're being so bitchy?"
She was ultimately charged with disorderly conduct and held for several hours with no explanation at the 9th Precinct stationhouse, where at one point Mata called her a "cunt," according to the complaint report from the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The CCRB recommended that the NYPD charge the officers with violating department rules, but that never happened, and one of Moreno's lawyers told the Voice, "It sounds like someone who is disorderly got arrested and now wants to capitalize on what happened. It sounds like sour grapes to me."
It also sounds like typical bullying cop behavior. And if you've ever tried to report a petty theft to a beat cop, you probably aren't surprised by these officers' uncooperative behavior. Would it have made a difference to the jury if they knew that Mata, who was accused of acting as a lookout while his partner raped a woman, had made offensive remarks to another woman? Without any DNA evidence connecting Mata to the sanitary napkin, it's hard to say!
Update (9/9/11): Gothamist has published a long-form feature about the Rape Cop case, written by one of the jurors. It takes you behind the scenes during their deliberations, and explains how they came to their controversial verdict. Buy it today as a PDF or on Kindle.
