http://www.projo.com/news/content/CRANSTON_POLICE_SEX_03-27-10_3CHTAUK_v24.3a578ad.htmlCRANSTON — One police officer has been fired and a second is under investigation for having sex with a woman multiple times in parking lots and a secluded wooded area in the Edgewood neighborhood while on duty last summer.
A three-member panel of police officers, seated for a Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights hearing, issued a 12-page ruling Friday that called for the termination of the officer, Patrolman Robert Neri, after the panel found him guilty of nine administrative charges. They include having sex with a woman while on duty, failing to cover his assigned police beat and failing to report a broadcast call of a suspicious person in his district.
The panel found that Neri was having sex with the woman at the time he was called to respond to the complaint on Norwood Avenue.
Vincent F. Ragosta Jr., the lawyer who prosecuted the case for the city, said that Neri has been fired.
A Bill of Rights hearing recently concluded on the other officer, but a final decision has not been rendered. As a result, he has not been publicly identified. Evidence surfaced at those hearings that he had sex with the woman on four occasions and exchanged more than 150 text messages with her.
Col. Marco Palombo Jr., Cranston police chief, testified at the separate hearings. He said the actions of the two men made them unfit to continue to serve as police officers. He said the allegations against them “are so twisted and deplorable, there is no place in this profession for that kind of conduct.”
The police say that Neri, 32, and the other officer formed a threesome with the woman on Sept. 1 and had sex with her on a downed tree in a wooded area behind Fay Memorial Field off Dallas Avenue. At the time, both officers were in uniform and working day shifts.
Ragosta said the investigation was launched in September after the 22-year-old woman filed a complaint with the Cranston police accusing the two officers of sexual misconduct. He said the woman lives with her parents in the city.
In July, Ragosta said, the woman was walking her dog when she saw the unnamed officer pass by in his cruiser. Ragosta said the woman told a teenage friend that she thought the officer was “cute,” and the teenager relayed the message to him.
Ragosta said the officer told the teenager that he wanted to meet the woman.
They met, and Ragosta said the conversation “immediately turned sexual.” On Aug. 1, testimony and internal police reports show, the officer and the woman had sex in the woman’s car at about 2 p.m. in a parking area outside an abandoned building at 1655 Elmwood Ave.
Afterward, that same day, the officer and the woman exchanged 114 text messages.
The reports and testimony note that the unidentified officer again had sex with the woman at the same place twice on Aug. 30. That encounter was followed by an exchange of 41 text messages — 22 from the woman, 19 from the officer.
The unidentified officer and Neri worked closely together in District 1 and 2 in Edgewood. They often collaborated on reports and responded to crime scenes together.
Ragosta said the unidentified officer went on vacation after his first sexual encounter with the woman. In his absence, Neri struck up a conversation with her and they had sex in the woman’s car Aug. 19 and Aug. 25 in a parking lot outside the vacant Ciba-Geigy Chemical plant on Mill Street.
On Sept. 1, both officers were on duty and they arranged to meet the woman at 1:35 p.m. at Fay Memorial Field in Edgewood. They arrived in their cruisers, then headed down a path into a secluded wooded area a short distance from the field.
There, Ragosta said, the two officers had sex with the woman.
The next day, the woman told her boyfriend about the tryst in the woods and they decided to go to police headquarters to report it. Ragosta said the department’s internal affairs division investigated the woman’s allegations. They collected semen and DNA samples from the wooded area and turned the evidence over to the attorney general’s office, Ragosta said.
On Oct. 28, Stacey Veroni, chief of the Criminal Division, concluded that there was not enough evidence to merit sexual-assault charges, but she characterized the officers’ conduct as “outrageous,” and called for disciplinary action against them.
Both officers have been suspended with pay since the investigation got under way. Neri joined the department in July 2003, while the other officer has been with the department since January 2005.
Neri does not believe that his actions should cost him his job.
At his Bill of Rights hearing, Chairman Raymond E. Gallucci Jr., a Warwick police officer, asked Neri whether he deserved to be fired.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
“Why not, sir?” Gallucci said.
“Because I’m not a bad person,” Neri said. “I used poor judgment. You know, I’ve been a good police officer for seven years. Nothing like this will ever happen again…. We should have never let this female get in a position to satisfy us or herself.”
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