Four NYPD detectives have been stripped of their guns and badges and placed on modified assignment after surveillance footage allegedly shows them drinking wine while on duty at a Washington Heights restaurant. According to the Times' police bureau chief, IAB is also investigating if one of the detectives had a sexual encounter with a waitress. "We are investigating whether or not one of the officers sexually assaulted this woman," the paper's NYPD source said.
The alleged incident was made known after an employee of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital contacted the NYPD after the waitress visited the hospital on the advice of an attorney. According to the police source, the waitress, who is in her 20s, said she fell asleep in the back of the restaurant and awoke to being inappropriately touched by one of the restaurant's owners. She also recalled one of the detectives escorting her there. “Several hundred dollars may have exchanged hands,” the police source said. “And the owner is maybe an intermediary.”
The detectives, all working in the 33rd Precinct, met at Parrilla on February 16 for a meal that "stretched beyond their one-hour break time," and footage shows the group sharing wine. Two of the four left for a period and returned later, and one of the detectives' shift had ended before the meal was finished. It's unclear whether the meal occurred in the evening or during the day.
“We have seen in the past sometimes that these allegations are not what they initially appear to be,” the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association told the paper. The lawyer representing all four detectives said, “It is our understanding that at no time did the waitress make any allegation of inappropriate sexual conduct against any of the detectives.”
And the lawyer representing the owners of Parrilla during the investigation (no criminal charges have been filed) added, “I don’t think there will be any wrongdoing proven against the restaurant, or any of its owners.”
