Another, Again.

NYPD cops accused of raping an intoxicated woman after helping her home:

The owner of the bar, Heather Millstone, 34, said she gave the district attorney’s office footage from a camera near the door of the bar on East 13th Street after two women arrived on Dec. 7 and said their friend had been attacked in her nearby apartment early that morning. The woman, who her friends said was in a hospital, had told them, “ ‘I’ve been raped. It was the police,’ ” Ms. Millstone said.

The three of them watched the video, which includes a time stamp, Ms. Millstone said, and saw one officer arrive at 1:10 a.m. and open the front door of the building as a second officer helped the intoxicated woman inside. The friends said the woman had been sick in a taxicab, and the cab driver had called 911, Ms. Millstone said.

“She’s really clearly impaired” Ms. Millstone said.

The officers can be seen leaving the building seven minutes after they entered, she said. They returned 39 minutes later, at 1:59 a.m., and followed a resident who used a key to enter the building, Ms. Millstone said. One officer looked up and seemed to notice the camera, she said.

The officers can be seen leaving the second time after 17 minutes, seeming to move quickly out of the camera’s range, Ms. Millstone said.

The officers can be seen returning to the building the third time at 2:59 a.m., this time entering with a key, Ms. Millstone said. “They’re coming in from behind the camera, so that their backs are to the camera,” she said.

The officers are seen leaving the building 34 minutes later, at 3:33 a.m., for the last time, she said.

“We made copies of the video,” she said. “I gave the copies to her friends so she could give them to her lawyer and the lawyer could take them directly to the D.A.’s office.”

One, good on the woman’s friends for investigating on her behalf; two, good on the bar owner for being so proactive about it; and three, I’m incredibly sad and disturbed that those three women (who are not employed by the NYPD) have had to do so much of the legwork on this.

Holly at Feministe doesn’t buy the “bad seed” theory that seems to get thrown around a lot when cops (like the one who brutalized that 15-year-old girl in Seattle) break the law:

Police abuse of authority and irresponsible, illegitimate use of violence — and make no mistake, non-consensual sex is violence — is a pattern, not an exception. It is part of an authoritarian culture where whatever the police say, goes. No matter how many “good cops” you think there are, we cannot profess surprise or exceptionalism when some asshole abuses that power.

[H/T Feministe.]

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