10
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, OCTOBER 20, 2019
Someone spray-painted the Christopher Columbus statue outside Kings County Supreme Court early Monday.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A vandal defaced a statue of
controversial Italian icon and
15th century explorer Christopher
Columbus outside a Downtown
Brooklyn courthouse in the
early hours Monday.
The scoffl aw spray-painted
the letters “FC” in blue, along
with some squiggly lines across
the plaque at the base of the
statue outside Kings County Supreme
Court near Court Street
at around 3:30 am, according to a
spokesman for police.
The vandalism coincided with
a federal holiday dedicated to the
European explorer, which was renamed
“Indigenous People’s Day”
to appease critics who denounced
Columbus for his enslavement of
the natives he encountered during
his travels.
Cops have not made any arrests
and the investigation for felony
criminal mischief remains
ongoing, according to the spokesman.
The city together with the Italian
Historical Society of America
erected the statue in 1971 under
then-mayor John Lindsay, according
to the plaque.
Wrist slap for
‘rape’ cops
BY ROSE ADAMS
Two disgraced former narcotics
detectives were slapped with fi ve
years’ probation after trading
freedom for sex with an 18-yearold
suspect in Gravesend.
Brooklyn Supreme Court
Justice Danny Chun sentenced
the defendants, Eddie Martins,
39, and Richard Hall, 34, on Friday,
following their guilty plea
in August to two counts of thirddegree
bribe receiving and nine
counts of offi cial misconduct,
according to District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez.
Martins and Hall were members
of the Police Department’s
Brooklyn South Narcotics team
when they cuffed the teenage
victim in Gravesend in September
2017, claiming they spotted
marijuana and two prescription
pills in her car. The detectives
then offered to release the
woman in exchange for sexual
favors , which they accepted
in the back of their police van
parked in Calvert Vaux Park,
according to the DA’s offi ce.
The victim — who goes by
the pseudonym Anna Chambers
— accused the detectives
of rape, but the district attorney
dropped the rape changes
the following March , citing “serious
credibility issues,” and
claiming that Chambers’ testimony
contained a “series of
false, misleading, and inconsistent
statements about the facts
of the case,” said Oren Yaniv, a
spokesman for the district attorney’s
offi ce.
Investigators matched DNA
recovered from the victim’s
body to both Martins and Hall,
and nearby video surveillance
shows the woman exiting the
police van about 40 minutes
after her arrest, prosecutors
claim.
Chambers’ attorney
slammed the DA for dropping
the rape charges, arguing that
the accusations against Chambers
were part of a smear campaign
against his client, and
that the hard evidence of the
case spoke for itself, Gothamist
reported .
“If you’re arrested and kidnapped
in a van with two large
offi cers with guns, there’s no
consent. They’re getting away
with rape,” said Michael David.
“It sends a horrible message to
victims of police sexual misconduct.”
With the most serious
charge dismissed, Martins and
Hall plead guilty to all remaining
charges in the indictment,
allowing them to accept a plea
deal offered by the court —
without prosecutors’ consent,
according to Gonzalez.
Following the high-profi le
sex crime in 2017, New York
State passed a law forbidding
police offi cers from having sex
with people in their custody.
Gonzalez — who had advocated
for three years’ prison time —
lamented that the law could not
be applied retroactively, and
that, as a result, the defendants
won’t serve prison time.
“This incident led to a
change in New York law, closing
a loophole that allowed offi
cers to claim that sex with a
detainee was consensual,” he
said on Friday. “Unfortunately,
we could not apply that new law
retroactively. While my Offi ce
recommended prison time, we
accept the Court’s sentence.”
COLUMBUS MARRED
BY OCEAN BLUE
Two former detectives were given fi ve years’ probation for having sex with a
teenager in their custody in exchange for her release. Photo via Shutterstock