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An Indonesian man named Mukhlis was recently caned in public in Aceh province, receiving 28 strikes after being caught having sex with a married woman. Mukhlis (many Indonesians use just one name) is a member of the Aceh Ulema Council, which lobbied the provincial government to enact Islamic sharia law and advises it in implementing that law. That law mandates public caning for adultery.
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An Indonesian man named Mukhlis was recently caned in public in Aceh province, receiving 28 strikes after being caught having sex with a married woman. Mukhlis (many Indonesians use just one name) is a member of the Aceh Ulema Council, which lobbied the provincial government to enact Islamic sharia law and advises it in implementing that law. That law mandates public caning for adultery.
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A Florida prison guard accused of breaking a female inmate’s neck in a vicious attack, and who has a long history of inmate complaints alleging physical and sexual abuse, was arrested Wednesday on charges of molesting two minors.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of Keith Turner on charges of sexual battery, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, and a second count of lewd and lascivious molestation in a second case.
According to the sheriff’s office, Turner’s accuser wrote a letter to a family member saying Turner began abusing her on a nightly basis when she was 6, and that the abuse continued until she was 16. During the investigation, detectives interviewed another juvenile who said she was sexually abused by Turner.
As Reason reported, Turner is one of two correctional officers named in a civil rights lawsuit accusing him of paralyzing an inmate at Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida’s largest women’s prison, where Turner watched over the vulnerable population for nearly a decade.
On Aug. 21, Lowell inmate Cheryl Weimar was admitted to the hospital with severe neck trauma. According to her lawsuit, Weimar, who has a history of mental illness, complained that she couldn’t clean toilets because of pain from a pre-existing hip condition. This led to a confrontation with Turner and another guard, according to Weimar’s lawsuit.
Weimar tried to declare a psychological emergency. Under department policy, the guards should have called for medical personnel. Instead, Weimar’s lawsuit alleges, Turner and the other officer slammed her to the ground and began beating her. At least one guard elbowed the back of her neck, the suit says. Weimar was then dragged “like a rag doll” to an area not covered by surveillance cameras.
Weimar is now quadriplegic, according to the lawsuit.
Records released last week in the lawsuit revealed that Turner had a decade-long history of inmate complaints against him alleging excessive force, sexual abuse and misconduct, racial slurs, and sadistic punishments that included leaving a handcuffed woman in 93-degree heat for 3 hours while calling her a “fat pig.” Another inmate told sheriff’s deputies that she witnessed Turner and another officer trading contraband cigarettes for oral sex.
None of that stopped Turner, who at some point was promoted to lieutenant, until this August.
Weimar’s hospitalization sent shockwaves through the state, drew national media coverage, and put a gruesome spotlight on Florida’s problem-ridden and wildly expensive prison system, especially Lowell, where inmates have long alleged sexual abuse and violence by guards.
Last August, the Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation into pervasive misconduct and sexual assaults by correctional staff at Lowell. A 2015 Miami Herald investigation found numerous accusations of assaults, retaliation, filthy conditions, inadequate healthcare, and suspicious deaths at the prison, as well as “an inadequate number of cameras,” which allows guards to hide brutality.
Democratic Florida state Rep. Dianne Hart said in a statement today that she applauds the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for making the arrest. “However, with over 130 pages of documented official FDOC incident reports detailing the horrors that Lt. Turner inflicted on the women of Lowell Correctional sitting on my desk and Cheryl Weimar with a broken neck,” she continued, “I find it absolutely disgusting that Lt. Keith Turner still has a place at FDOC, and I pray that justice is served in all cases involving Lt. Turner.”
After Weimar’s hospitalization, the state launched several investigations into the incident, and Turner and the other guard were reassigned to jobs where they would not have contact with inmates.
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections said the department is now moving forward with Turner’s dismissal.
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A Florida prison guard accused of breaking a female inmate’s neck in a vicious attack, and who has a long history of inmate complaints alleging physical and sexual abuse, was arrested Wednesday on charges of molesting two minors.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of Keith Turner on charges of sexual battery, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, and a second count of lewd and lascivious molestation in a second case.
According to the sheriff’s office, Turner’s accuser wrote a letter to a family member saying Turner began abusing her on a nightly basis when she was 6, and that the abuse continued until she was 16. During the investigation, detectives interviewed another juvenile who said she was sexually abused by Turner.
As Reason reported, Turner is one of two correctional officers named in a civil rights lawsuit accusing him of paralyzing an inmate at Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida’s largest women’s prison, where Turner watched over the vulnerable population for nearly a decade.
On Aug. 21, Lowell inmate Cheryl Weimar was admitted to the hospital with severe neck trauma. According to her lawsuit, Weimar, who has a history of mental illness, complained that she couldn’t clean toilets because of pain from a pre-existing hip condition. This led to a confrontation with Turner and another guard, according to Weimar’s lawsuit.
Weimar tried to declare a psychological emergency. Under department policy, the guards should have called for medical personnel. Instead, Weimar’s lawsuit alleges, Turner and the other officer slammed her to the ground and began beating her. At least one guard elbowed the back of her neck, the suit says. Weimar was then dragged “like a rag doll” to an area not covered by surveillance cameras.
Weimar is now quadriplegic, according to the lawsuit.
Records released last week in the lawsuit revealed that Turner had a decade-long history of inmate complaints against him alleging excessive force, sexual abuse and misconduct, racial slurs, and sadistic punishments that included leaving a handcuffed woman in 93-degree heat for 3 hours while calling her a “fat pig.” Another inmate told sheriff’s deputies that she witnessed Turner and another officer trading contraband cigarettes for oral sex.
None of that stopped Turner, who at some point was promoted to lieutenant, until this August.
Weimar’s hospitalization sent shockwaves through the state, drew national media coverage, and put a gruesome spotlight on Florida’s problem-ridden and wildly expensive prison system, especially Lowell, where inmates have long alleged sexual abuse and violence by guards.
Last August, the Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation into pervasive misconduct and sexual assaults by correctional staff at Lowell. A 2015 Miami Herald investigation found numerous accusations of assaults, retaliation, filthy conditions, inadequate healthcare, and suspicious deaths at the prison, as well as “an inadequate number of cameras,” which allows guards to hide brutality.
Democratic Florida state Rep. Dianne Hart said in a statement today that she applauds the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for making the arrest. “However, with over 130 pages of documented official FDOC incident reports detailing the horrors that Lt. Turner inflicted on the women of Lowell Correctional sitting on my desk and Cheryl Weimar with a broken neck,” she continued, “I find it absolutely disgusting that Lt. Keith Turner still has a place at FDOC, and I pray that justice is served in all cases involving Lt. Turner.”
After Weimar’s hospitalization, the state launched several investigations into the incident, and Turner and the other guard were reassigned to jobs where they would not have contact with inmates.
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections said the department is now moving forward with Turner’s dismissal.
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When it comes to the country’s urban housing shortage, Californian cities are typically the ones that capture headlines, yet the situation is not much better in New York City.
Surging employment growth is outpacing new housing construction in America’s largest metro area, leading to longer commutes and higher housing costs. And while the Golden State has begun, slowly, to adopt prudent housing reforms, New York is doubling down on policies that will only make its problems worse.
In October, New York City’s Department of Planning released its second Geography of Jobs report, which tracks employment growth in the region, finding that the 22.6 million-person metro has added 924,000 jobs since 2008, with 675,000 of these added in New York City alone.
That employment growth has, however, not been matched by new housing. Since 2009, the wider New York area added just 457,000 units of housing, or about one new home for every two jobs, according to the planning department’s report. This ratio is even more skewed in New York City, where only one unit of housing has been built for every 3.55 new jobs.
“New York City has gained jobs very rapidly, [but] the region as a whole has not produced enough housing,” says Eric Kober, a former director with the city’s Department of Planning and an adjunct scholar at the Manhattan Institute. “The housing that it does produce is not produced in proportion to the amount of existing population that different parts of the region have.”
Kober notes that northern New Jersey has done a decent job of adding housing to accommodate the region’s growth, building 40 percent of the region’s new units since the Great Recession despite having only 30 percent of the region’s population, and adding only 15 percent of its jobs since 2008.
By comparison, New York City has added 70 percent of the region’s new jobs since 2008, but only 40 percent of its new housing units. The New York suburbs in Long Island and the Hudson Valley have added few jobs and even less housing.
Much of this is driven by local land-use policies, says Kober, who told me that places like New Jersey have accommodated new housing development, while New York City has lagged behind, and the New York suburbs have been openly hostile to it.
“The market is functioning in New Jersey, so maybe New Jersey is getting as much housing as the market wants,” Kober says. “But it is also a matter of the rest of region suppressing through restrictive zoning what the market would otherwise be inclined to build.”
In particular, Kober identifies low-density zoning and minimum parking requirements in most New York suburbs as holding up needed development. Despite already having a lot of high-density areas, he says New York City has also failed to rezone enough land to accommodate the city’s growth.
The result is that more people are making longer commutes, many of them via mass transit lines that suffer from overcrowding and frequent delays. Drivers aren’t faring much better. The New York metro area has the fourth worst traffic in the country, according to the INRIX’s 2018 Traffic Scorecard Report, with commuters losing 133 hours a year to congestion.
New Jersey Transit reports that the number of on-time trains (meaning trains arriving within six minutes of their scheduled arrival) was at 92 percent overall in September, two percent less than the agency’s 94 percent on-time goal. Trains traveling to and from New York City’s Penn Station had an 85 percent on-time rate during peak hours.
Housing costs have also increased in much of the area. New York City has the second-highest median rents for a one-bedroom apartment, according to a June report from rental website Zumper, behind only San Francisco.
“Cities are labor markets,” says Michael Hendrix, an urban policy scholar with the Manhattan Institute. “If we fail to scale housing and transportation to job centers, then we are failing the basic function of a city.”
Hendrix warns that if the New York Metro area continues to see commute times and housing prices grow, the economic dynamism of the region will recede, noting that the city actually saw its population shrink last year. Unfortunately, Hendrix says policy at both the city and state level is getting worse.
“New York City and Albany have chosen to go in the wrong direction. They’ve chosen to preserve units for people who’ve already lucked out in the housing lottery, and lock out newcomers and outsiders,” he says, referencing the state’s strengthening of its existing rent stabilization law, which limits how much landlords can raise rental prices.
Developers and landlords cite these changes to the rent stabilization law for wanting to leave the city.
And while California has started to embrace halting reforms to its housing crisis—passing bills this year that make projects harder to delay and building accessory dwelling units easier—New York is considering nothing productive.
“Cuomo hasn’t signed anything that’s market-oriented in terms of housing solutions,” Hendrix tells me. “The state legislature certainly hasn’t proposed anything. Local control remains sacrosanct. On net, we’re getting fewer property rights and more rights to exclude.”
New York’s housing situation has not yet reached Californian levels of dysfunction. Despite anemic post-recession housing growth, the metro area has still managed to add a unit of housing for every 1.15 jobs.
Still, housing crises aren’t created overnight. Not adding enough units today can mean serious problems tomorrow.
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When it comes to the country’s urban housing shortage, Californian cities are typically the ones that capture headlines, yet the situation is not much better in New York City.
Surging employment growth is outpacing new housing construction in America’s largest metro area, leading to longer commutes and higher housing costs. And while the Golden State has begun, slowly, to adopt prudent housing reforms, New York is doubling down on policies that will only make its problems worse.
In October, New York City’s Department of Planning released its second Geography of Jobs report, which tracks employment growth in the region, finding that the 22.6 million-person metro has added 924,000 jobs since 2008, with 675,000 of these added in New York City alone.
That employment growth has, however, not been matched by new housing. Since 2009, the wider New York area added just 457,000 units of housing, or about one new home for every two jobs, according to the planning department’s report. This ratio is even more skewed in New York City, where only one unit of housing has been built for every 3.55 new jobs.
“New York City has gained jobs very rapidly, [but] the region as a whole has not produced enough housing,” says Eric Kober, a former director with the city’s Department of Planning and an adjunct scholar at the Manhattan Institute. “The housing that it does produce is not produced in proportion to the amount of existing population that different parts of the region have.”
Kober notes that northern New Jersey has done a decent job of adding housing to accommodate the region’s growth, building 40 percent of the region’s new units since the Great Recession despite having only 30 percent of the region’s population, and adding only 15 percent of its jobs since 2008.
By comparison, New York City has added 70 percent of the region’s new jobs since 2008, but only 40 percent of its new housing units. The New York suburbs in Long Island and the Hudson Valley have added few jobs and even less housing.
Much of this is driven by local land-use policies, says Kober, who told me that places like New Jersey have accommodated new housing development, while New York City has lagged behind, and the New York suburbs have been openly hostile to it.
“The market is functioning in New Jersey, so maybe New Jersey is getting as much housing as the market wants,” Kober says. “But it is also a matter of the rest of region suppressing through restrictive zoning what the market would otherwise be inclined to build.”
In particular, Kober identifies low-density zoning and minimum parking requirements in most New York suburbs as holding up needed development. Despite already having a lot of high-density areas, he says New York City has also failed to rezone enough land to accommodate the city’s growth.
The result is that more people are making longer commutes, many of them via mass transit lines that suffer from overcrowding and frequent delays. Drivers aren’t faring much better. The New York metro area has the fourth worst traffic in the country, according to the INRIX’s 2018 Traffic Scorecard Report, with commuters losing 133 hours a year to congestion.
New Jersey Transit reports that the number of on-time trains (meaning trains arriving within six minutes of their scheduled arrival) was at 92 percent overall in September, two percent less than the agency’s 94 percent on-time goal. Trains traveling to and from New York City’s Penn Station had an 85 percent on-time rate during peak hours.
Housing costs have also increased in much of the area. New York City has the second-highest median rents for a one-bedroom apartment, according to a June report from rental website Zumper, behind only San Francisco.
“Cities are labor markets,” says Michael Hendrix, an urban policy scholar with the Manhattan Institute. “If we fail to scale housing and transportation to job centers, then we are failing the basic function of a city.”
Hendrix warns that if the New York Metro area continues to see commute times and housing prices grow, the economic dynamism of the region will recede, noting that the city actually saw its population shrink last year. Unfortunately, Hendrix says policy at both the city and state level is getting worse.
“New York City and Albany have chosen to go in the wrong direction. They’ve chosen to preserve units for people who’ve already lucked out in the housing lottery, and lock out newcomers and outsiders,” he says, referencing the state’s strengthening of its existing rent stabilization law, which limits how much landlords can raise rental prices.
Developers and landlords cite these changes to the rent stabilization law for wanting to leave the city.
And while California has started to embrace halting reforms to its housing crisis—passing bills this year that make projects harder to delay and building accessory dwelling units easier—New York is considering nothing productive.
“Cuomo hasn’t signed anything that’s market-oriented in terms of housing solutions,” Hendrix tells me. “The state legislature certainly hasn’t proposed anything. Local control remains sacrosanct. On net, we’re getting fewer property rights and more rights to exclude.”
New York’s housing situation has not yet reached Californian levels of dysfunction. Despite anemic post-recession housing growth, the metro area has still managed to add a unit of housing for every 1.15 jobs.
Still, housing crises aren’t created overnight. Not adding enough units today can mean serious problems tomorrow.
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New York City police officers may face actual consequences for lying after voters passed a ballot question Tuesday to strengthen a civilian oversight board that reviews complaints of police misconduct.
New York City voters approved a ballot question by 74 percent that will give the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an NYPD oversight group, the power to investigate and potentially prosecute NYPD officers for lying.
Ballot Question 2 will expand the number of CCRB members, increase its funding, and allow the board to investigate the truthfulness of statements made by NYPD officers during the course of its investigations.
The board can now also recommend discipline against police officers found to have lied and require the NYPD police commissioner to provide the CCRB with a written explanation when the commissioner departs from the board’s recommendations.
“New Yorkers looked at the facts and voted for greater police accountability in their city,” CCRB chair Fred Davie said in a statement following the vote. “This slate of reforms will make the CCRB more efficient, make discipline more transparent, and bolster public confidence in the integrity of the agency’s process.”
Watchdog reports and media investigations have revealed systemic problems with the disciplinary process guiding the roughly 35,000 sworn officers of the NYPD, the largest police department in the country. The process is cloaked in secrecy, and the NYPD commissioner has total discretion to ignore the disciplinary recommendations in administrative trials of officers.
Last year, BuzzFeed News obtained thousands of NYPD misconduct records through a leak. The resulting investigation identified 319 NYPD employees who had committed offenses serious enough to warrant firing—lying, stealing, ticket-fixing, excessive force—yet were allowed to keep their job.
Embarrassed by the leaks, the NYPD formed an independent panel to review its disciplinary process. The panel released its report earlier this year, finding that there is a “fundamental and pervasive lack of transparency into the [NYPD’s] disciplinary process and about disciplinary outcomes.”
Police unions, which have opposed efforts to roll back police secrecy laws and increase oversight of the department, urged voters to reject the ballot question.
The Police Benevolent Association (PBA), a powerful union of rank-and-file NYPD officers, said in a statement opposing the ballot question that “each unsubstantiated complaint can derail an officer’s career, subjecting him or her to performance monitoring and hurting his or her chances of career advancement.”
“An emboldened CCRB would exacerbate this situation, embolden anti-police extremists, and reduce the authority of the Police Commissioner,” the PBA continued.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, as is his habit on matters that anger police unions, dithered when asked directly about his stance on the ballot question. Meanwhile, his office was reportedly working behind the scenes to scuttle the initiative.
Tuesday’s vote comes at the same time that district attorneys offices in New York City have begun releasing lists of police officers whose credibility, or lack thereof, has been flagged by prosecutors. These so-called “Brady lists,” named after the Supreme Court precedent set in Brady v. Maryland, are used to keep disreputable cops off the witness stand and provide information on past misconduct to defense attorneys.
On Wednesday, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office publicly released a list of 54 NYPD officers with credibility issues, spurred by Freedom of Information requests from Gothamist and WNYC.
“Officer names, including those we are barred from releasing to the public, are regularly disclosed to defense lawyers and the courts in keeping with our legally-mandated obligations,” Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez said Wednesday. “We have also publicly released the identities of police officers my Office has deemed not credible and that we would never use as the sole witness in a case.”
Unsurprisingly, police unions also got lathered up about the release of the list.
“It is clear that Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez has abandoned his prosecutorial role. He sides with the criminals, not crime victims,” PBA president Patrick Lynch said in a statement. “He knows that truthful police testimony gets thrown out every day in our courts, often based on a judge’s whims and biases. He knows that publicizing this information will destroy the careers of honest police officers and torpedo the cases against violent, gun-toting criminals—assuming he bothers to prosecute them at all.”
Among the NYPD officers on the list was Richard Danese, who was indicted for unlawful imprisonment and child endangerment for allegedly dumping a 14-year-old boy in a swamp as punishment for egging cars on Halloween in 2007. Danese eventually pled guilty to disorderly conduct and was allowed to keep his job.
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New York City police officers may face actual consequences for lying after voters passed a ballot question Tuesday to strengthen a civilian oversight board that reviews complaints of police misconduct.
New York City voters approved a ballot question by 74 percent that will give the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an NYPD oversight group, the power to investigate and potentially prosecute NYPD officers for lying.
Ballot Question 2 will expand the number of CCRB members, increase its funding, and allow the board to investigate the truthfulness of statements made by NYPD officers during the course of its investigations.
The board can now also recommend discipline against police officers found to have lied and require the NYPD police commissioner to provide the CCRB with a written explanation when the commissioner departs from the board’s recommendations.
“New Yorkers looked at the facts and voted for greater police accountability in their city,” CCRB chair Fred Davie said in a statement following the vote. “This slate of reforms will make the CCRB more efficient, make discipline more transparent, and bolster public confidence in the integrity of the agency’s process.”
Watchdog reports and media investigations have revealed systemic problems with the disciplinary process guiding the roughly 35,000 sworn officers of the NYPD, the largest police department in the country. The process is cloaked in secrecy, and the NYPD commissioner has total discretion to ignore the disciplinary recommendations in administrative trials of officers.
Last year, BuzzFeed News obtained thousands of NYPD misconduct records through a leak. The resulting investigation identified 319 NYPD employees who had committed offenses serious enough to warrant firing—lying, stealing, ticket-fixing, excessive force—yet were allowed to keep their job.
Embarrassed by the leaks, the NYPD formed an independent panel to review its disciplinary process. The panel released its report earlier this year, finding that there is a “fundamental and pervasive lack of transparency into the [NYPD’s] disciplinary process and about disciplinary outcomes.”
Police unions, which have opposed efforts to roll back police secrecy laws and increase oversight of the department, urged voters to reject the ballot question.
The Police Benevolent Association (PBA), a powerful union of rank-and-file NYPD officers, said in a statement opposing the ballot question that “each unsubstantiated complaint can derail an officer’s career, subjecting him or her to performance monitoring and hurting his or her chances of career advancement.”
“An emboldened CCRB would exacerbate this situation, embolden anti-police extremists, and reduce the authority of the Police Commissioner,” the PBA continued.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, as is his habit on matters that anger police unions, dithered when asked directly about his stance on the ballot question. Meanwhile, his office was reportedly working behind the scenes to scuttle the initiative.
Tuesday’s vote comes at the same time that district attorneys offices in New York City have begun releasing lists of police officers whose credibility, or lack thereof, has been flagged by prosecutors. These so-called “Brady lists,” named after the Supreme Court precedent set in Brady v. Maryland, are used to keep disreputable cops off the witness stand and provide information on past misconduct to defense attorneys.
On Wednesday, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office publicly released a list of 54 NYPD officers with credibility issues, spurred by Freedom of Information requests from Gothamist and WNYC.
“Officer names, including those we are barred from releasing to the public, are regularly disclosed to defense lawyers and the courts in keeping with our legally-mandated obligations,” Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez said Wednesday. “We have also publicly released the identities of police officers my Office has deemed not credible and that we would never use as the sole witness in a case.”
Unsurprisingly, police unions also got lathered up about the release of the list.
“It is clear that Brooklyn D.A. Eric Gonzalez has abandoned his prosecutorial role. He sides with the criminals, not crime victims,” PBA president Patrick Lynch said in a statement. “He knows that truthful police testimony gets thrown out every day in our courts, often based on a judge’s whims and biases. He knows that publicizing this information will destroy the careers of honest police officers and torpedo the cases against violent, gun-toting criminals—assuming he bothers to prosecute them at all.”
Among the NYPD officers on the list was Richard Danese, who was indicted for unlawful imprisonment and child endangerment for allegedly dumping a 14-year-old boy in a swamp as punishment for egging cars on Halloween in 2007. Danese eventually pled guilty to disorderly conduct and was allowed to keep his job.
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The Phoenix Police Department is down another police officer after a woman filed a lawsuit alleging stalking and harassment while acting under the color of law.
According to the lawsuit, Maricopa County resident Marcela de Jesus Guzman Estrada was driving to the grocery store after church in August 2018 when officer Marcos Rodriguez pulled onto the road abruptly in his police cruiser. He was on his cellphone. Guzman swerved to avoid being hit. Down the road, Rodriguez pulled up beside her vehicle, signaled for her to lower the window, and apologized for his driving.
When she attempted to drive away, Rodriguez indicated that he wanted her to pull over, but did not engage his cruiser’s lights. He then pulled up to Guzman’s car facing the opposite direction and extended his apology to an invitation to coffee.
The lawsuit says that Rodriguez informed Guzman he had an emergency call, but that he continued to pester her for coffee. Guzman declined his offer several times during the exchange, at one point using the priority of an emergency call as justification. Guzman says in the lawsuit that she gave Rodriguez her business card and he drove away.
Later, Rodriguez allegedly texted Guzman at her business card cell number. He then showed up to her apartment dressed in his uniform and holding his department laptop. The lawsuit says that Guzman was “uncomfortable” considering she never gave Rodriguez her address. Still, she says in the lawsuit that she let him inside under the belief that he was there to conduct a report about the driving incident.
Setting up his laptop at her dining table, Rodriguez allegedly began to make comments on them becoming friends. He suggested that Guzman needed him in her life because she lived alone. The conversation turned sexual when Rodriguez asked Guzman, who he seated at the table, if she wanted to be kissed. Guzman noted a wedding band on his finger and further rebuked his advances. Rodriguez allegedly replied by calling his wife “boring” and his marriage “dead.”
During the exchange, Rodriguez stood up, grabbed his genitals, and asked Guzman if she was interested in “some of this.” Rodriguez hovered his pelvic area over Guzman, who then attempted to get him out of her apartment by saying she had to go to the movies.
Rodriguez continued, describing his desire to have anal sex. Guzman continued to deny him and asked him to stop making sexual advances. According to the lawsuit, Rodriguez told her that he was an officer and had the authority to do as he pleased.
The lawsuit says that Rodriguez demonstrated on Guzman what he would do if someone were to disarm him on the street. Guzman alleges that Rodriguez wrapped his arm around her neck and pointed his gun at her face. He then moved the gun to her ribs before leaving the apartment.
Rodriguez continued to text Guzman. His texts ranged from telling her that she needed a man for protection to sharing deeply personal details about his broken childhood. Guzman was forced to abandon her apartment very quickly out of fear for her safety. Because of the abruptness, Guzman lost many of her possessions.
The lawsuit also names three other detectives as defendants: Hunnicutt (whose first name is not listed in the lawsuit), Brandon Warner, and Carmina Theriault. Guzman says in her lawsuit that Hunnicutt and Warner took Guzman’s information at the police station but did not follow up with her. Theriault also heard Guzman’s story, but then rudely screamed that she watched too many movies and was merely seeking money from the police department.
Last month, the Phoenix City Council approved a $125,000 settlement to Guzman. Phoenix Police Department Spokesperson Sgt. Tommy Thompson confirmed to Reason that Rodriguez was terminated on October 16, but he was “unable to provide more information at this time, because the appellate process is still ongoing.”
The Phoenix New Times reports that Rodriguez is the fifth officer since August to be fired from the department for major and disturbing misconduct.
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The Phoenix Police Department is down another police officer after a woman filed a lawsuit alleging stalking and harassment while acting under the color of law.
According to the lawsuit, Maricopa County resident Marcela de Jesus Guzman Estrada was driving to the grocery store after church in August 2018 when officer Marcos Rodriguez pulled onto the road abruptly in his police cruiser. He was on his cellphone. Guzman swerved to avoid being hit. Down the road, Rodriguez pulled up beside her vehicle, signaled for her to lower the window, and apologized for his driving.
When she attempted to drive away, Rodriguez indicated that he wanted her to pull over, but did not engage his cruiser’s lights. He then pulled up to Guzman’s car facing the opposite direction and extended his apology to an invitation to coffee.
The lawsuit says that Rodriguez informed Guzman he had an emergency call, but that he continued to pester her for coffee. Guzman declined his offer several times during the exchange, at one point using the priority of an emergency call as justification. Guzman says in the lawsuit that she gave Rodriguez her business card and he drove away.
Later, Rodriguez allegedly texted Guzman at her business card cell number. He then showed up to her apartment dressed in his uniform and holding his department laptop. The lawsuit says that Guzman was “uncomfortable” considering she never gave Rodriguez her address. Still, she says in the lawsuit that she let him inside under the belief that he was there to conduct a report about the driving incident.
Setting up his laptop at her dining table, Rodriguez allegedly began to make comments on them becoming friends. He suggested that Guzman needed him in her life because she lived alone. The conversation turned sexual when Rodriguez asked Guzman, who he seated at the table, if she wanted to be kissed. Guzman noted a wedding band on his finger and further rebuked his advances. Rodriguez allegedly replied by calling his wife “boring” and his marriage “dead.”
During the exchange, Rodriguez stood up, grabbed his genitals, and asked Guzman if she was interested in “some of this.” Rodriguez hovered his pelvic area over Guzman, who then attempted to get him out of her apartment by saying she had to go to the movies.
Rodriguez continued, describing his desire to have anal sex. Guzman continued to deny him and asked him to stop making sexual advances. According to the lawsuit, Rodriguez told her that he was an officer and had the authority to do as he pleased.
The lawsuit says that Rodriguez demonstrated on Guzman what he would do if someone were to disarm him on the street. Guzman alleges that Rodriguez wrapped his arm around her neck and pointed his gun at her face. He then moved the gun to her ribs before leaving the apartment.
Rodriguez continued to text Guzman. His texts ranged from telling her that she needed a man for protection to sharing deeply personal details about his broken childhood. Guzman was forced to abandon her apartment very quickly out of fear for her safety. Because of the abruptness, Guzman lost many of her possessions.
The lawsuit also names three other detectives as defendants: Hunnicutt (whose first name is not listed in the lawsuit), Brandon Warner, and Carmina Theriault. Guzman says in her lawsuit that Hunnicutt and Warner took Guzman’s information at the police station but did not follow up with her. Theriault also heard Guzman’s story, but then rudely screamed that she watched too many movies and was merely seeking money from the police department.
Last month, the Phoenix City Council approved a $125,000 settlement to Guzman. Phoenix Police Department Spokesperson Sgt. Tommy Thompson confirmed to Reason that Rodriguez was terminated on October 16, but he was “unable to provide more information at this time, because the appellate process is still ongoing.”
The Phoenix New Times reports that Rodriguez is the fifth officer since August to be fired from the department for major and disturbing misconduct.
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