This week, former police officer Michael Pena was sentenced to 75 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 25-year-old school teacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August. In the Daily News today, his defense attorney Ephraim Savitt wrote a passioned op-ed about what he calls an unjust sentence: "Is there a constitutional carveout for rape charges involving a police officer? The quest for proportionality has taken a dangerous detour. It is one that neither deters criminal behavior nor promotes respect for our criminal justice system. But it’s good press and even better politics." more ›

A New Jersey police officer has been arrested for allegedly attempting to spark a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl. Woodland Park Police Officer Steven Vigorito Jr., 39, has been charged with attempted aggravated sexual assault as well as luring and enticing a child—he met the alleged victim while assisting her family in an unrelated police matter. "What is so disturbing about this, is the person who was to assist the family, ends up preying on the family," said Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes. more ›

The trial of former police officer Michael Pena—who had been accused of raping a 25-year-old school teacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August—was a giant mess, to say the least. Chief among the problems was the fact that one of the three holdout jurors who refused to convict Pena of rape (but did convict him of predatory sexual assault) had ties to several prominent law-enforcement figures, but purposefully withheld that information. Finally, lawyer Lloyd Constantine admitted to the News that maybe, just maybe, he made a mistake in not admitting those ties initially: “I would have included a much longer list of names and somewhere in there would have been Cy Vance,” he said in hindsight. more ›

An off-duty cop was charged with drunk driving after getting into an accident on the Upper East Side last night. Police say that Officer Raymond Dimaria, 35, drove the wrong way down Second Avenue and smashed into a Nissan Maxima on East 63rd Street around 1:20 a.m. more ›

We're still trying to understand exactly what happened in Manhattan Criminal Court over the past two weeks that led to former police office Michael Pena—who had been on trial for the alleged rape of a 25-year-old school teacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August—not getting convicted of rape, despite being convicted of three counts of predatory sexual assault. More information has leaked out about the holdout jurors: the Daily News reports that at least one juror didn't believe the victim because she could not recall the color of a car parked by the courtyard where she was attacked: “If she doesn’t remember these details, how does she know she was penetrated,” one juror said, according to their sources. more ›

For the better part of the last month, former police officer Michael Pena had been on trial for the alleged rape of a 25-year-old school teacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August. Jurors heard eyewitness accounts, doctors testimony, and the victim's first-hand account of being attacked—and ultimately, Pena was found guilty of three counts of predatory sexual assault. But the judge declared a mistrial on the rape charges because of a deadlocked jury. Today, everyone is trying to make sense of what happened—but one juror has vowed to not lose any sleep over the case: “This was not fun,” juror Lloyd Constantine told reporters. “This was hard work. It was difficult, painful work...There’s no law that says a jury has to reach a verdict.” more ›

An NYPD officer accidentally shot a woman in the neighboring Brooklyn apartment where a raid was going on early this morning. The officer was participating in a drug raid in a third floor apartment at 3003 Clarendon Road when he accidentally fired his weapon just before 8 a.m, shooting a 25-year-old woman in the apartment below. more ›

The fiancée of Michael Pena—the 28-year-old police officer who is accused of raping a schoolteacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August—told a jury that she still loved him, and planned to marry him, during her testimony yesterday. Alma Rodriguez, 24, answered defense attorney Ephraim Savitt's questions through a translator—the Dominican Republic citizen said she understood the charges against Pena, and still loved him. She also claimed that she and Pena had sex hours before the alleged rape took place. more ›

The prosecution rested their case this week against Michael Pena, a 27-year-old police officer who is accused of raping a schoolteacher at gunpoint while off-duty in Manhattan last August. This came after testimony from the victim, a bartender who confirmed Pena was drinking heavily that evening, and a witness who saw Pena attacking the 25-year-old teacher. The witness described what she saw as "joyless" sex, and added, "It wasn't like 'let's sneak a quickie.'" Defense attorney Ephraim Savitt responded: "I'm sure it wasn't a quickie. I'm sure it was joyless, but she also didn't see exactly what happened." more ›

Someone claiming to be an NYPD officer is currently answering questions on Reddit. Obviously, you can take it with however many grains of salt you wish, but Reddit has a pretty good track record of verifying this sort of thing. And having read through the answers, we're guessing it's legit. The last time a cop took questions on Reddit it made for an interesting read, so if you've got any burning questions for the NYPD, fire away. We should probably ask him why the NYPD press office thinks it's okay to treat the media with utter hostility. more ›

A Manhattan psychologist who was pulled over for a traffic violation earlier this week allegedly tried to hightail it—and instead ended up dragging a cop with his vehicle. According to the Post, Mount Sinai assistant clinical Professor William Bannon Jr. was stopped after he had driven his 2007 Nissan Quest down the wrong lane on East 62nd Street near First Avenue shortly before 8 p.m. on Wednesday. But the officer who pulled him over soon found out that stopping a shrink can be as much of a drag as going to one. more ›

The police officer who killed himself while on duty Thursday night had apparently been agitated. Terrence Dean, 28, had been interviewing car break-in victims in Hollis Hills, Queens, but he took a call from his fiancée and shot himself in the head shortly after. The Post reports that the fiancée was concerned about his state of mind and had actually called his precinct 15 minutes earlier: "The woman never mentioned [Dean] by name — and only asked vague questions about what happens to a cop who wants to kill himself and if he would lose his gun or be suspended. The 111th Precinct cop who fielded the anonymous call guessed that she was talking about Dean and told a supervisor — but they allowed him to respond to a car break-in before calling him in." more ›

A plainclothed Brooklyn cop was badly injured when he was pinned between cars during a routine traffic stop yesterday. According to the Post, the unidentified detective had pulled over a black vehicle in Flatbush with four men inside; he was standing behind the car when a white van rammed into him, crushing his legs and sending blood everywhere. “When they pulled him out of the car, his legs were hanging, dangling, it was terrible, there was blood everywhere,” said one witness. more ›

Police say a man impersonating a police officer sexually assaulted and then robbed a Queens woman last month. According to NBC New York, "The woman, 52, was posting flyers at about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 along 41st Avenue in Flushing when she was approached by a burgundy van or SUV with four people inside. The suspect displayed a business card with a police logo and told her it was illegal to post flyers, asking for her identification, police said." more ›

An off duty Bronx cop was arrested and charged with a DWI after a car crash yesterday that left his partner in a medically-induced coma. Officer Rafael Casiano was driving his personal vehicle on the Bronx River Parkway near the Cross Bronx Expressway around 4:30 p.m when his car skidded, hit a divider, and flipped. more ›

An off-duty cop shot and apprehended a suspected groper in a subway station in Harlem today. The shooting happened on the platform of an A train at the 125th Street station just after 12:30 p.m. According to the News, a mother screamed that her teen daughter had just been groped, and a second woman also came forward that she had been groped. The officer spotted the suspect sitting on a bench in front of the train: “As he approaches [the suspect] the officer identifies himself as a police officer,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “A struggle ensues and one round is discharged from the officer’s gun, striking the suspect in the [buttocks].“ more ›

A spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management was suspended without pay after an incident in Soho on Wednesday night. The Post reports that Seth Andrews crashed his city-owned car and then threatened a female police officer who was arresting him, "I’m going to choke you, just watch out. You’re done. I can’t wait to get you on Staten Island. You just watch your gun." more ›

A Newark cop has been accused of tricking a drunk driver into giving him his pickup truck so the officer could use it to ram his estranged wife's car. Officer Enrique Gonzalez has been charged with criminal mischief and receiving stolen property—police say the pickup driver thought he had lucked out when the uniformed officer, who was off-duty at the time, told him to pickup the car later: "He says, ‘Okay, I’m not going to arrest you. Park your car here. I’m going to leave the keys in the tailpipe. Come back and get the car when you’re sober,’" Police Director Samuel DeMaio said. The driver "comes back several hours later and finds the car gone." more ›

An off-duty cop has been charged with killing a man while allegedly driving drunk early Wednesday morning in the Bronx. According to police, rookie officer Luis Arnao, 25, struck Tyre Chisholm, 22, with his 2011 Honda Accord as Chisholm was crossing the street on White Plains Road near 241st Street just before 4 a.m. "He got hit hard. He flew up in the air. His shoes flew off with his socks still in them," said witness Devine Douglas. more ›

A veteran NYPD officer distraught over being called to testify in the ticket-fixing scandal which has engulfed the police force this year allegedly attempted to commit suicide earlier today. Officer Robert McGee, 62, a three-decade veteran and union delegate assigned to the 43rd Precinct, jumped in the tracks on the No. 1 line at a Riverdale subway station just before 5 a.m. this morning, and tried to electrocute himself by clutching the third rail. Earlier that night, McGee's wife had called cops and said he "was suicidal." more ›

The current commanding officer at the World Trade Center has been accused by a fellow police sergeant of pressuring Bronx cops to make ticket quotas, and of routinely using racist language. In his lawsuit, Sgt. Christopher Groben has also accused Inspector Donald McHugh of ordering him to give negative performance evaluations to two "well-regarded" black sergeants when he was commander of the 41st Precinct in the Bronx between October 2008 and September 2010. more ›

The FBI is still on the search for Donna Borup, a woman who threw acid in the face of a Port Authority Cop at JFK Airport, way back in 1981. The FBI hasn't been able to track Borup down, so it just released a statement and an updated picture of what she might look like today in order to hopefully get some solid leads. more ›

Yesterday, the 27-year-old police officer accused of raping a woman at gunpoint in Inwood last Friday was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan. But today, it was revealed that police are investigating whether officer Michael Pena was involved in two other sexual assaults in the three years he's been on the force. And, Pena was once hit with a brutality suit for assaulting and battering a perp, as well as performing a body-cavity search that went "beyond all possible bounds of decency." more ›

The 27-year-old police officer accused of raping a woman at gunpoint in Inwood early last Friday is worried that the Manhattan DA is going to try and "make an example" out of him over a misunderstanding. Three-year-veteran Michael Pena, currently at Rikers, told the Daily News in his first jailhouse interview that "The DA is arresting cops, indicting cops. They're trying to make an example out of me." more ›