José Briceño, an NYPD lieutenant whose job it was to stop workplace harassment, was fired for sexually stalking a female subordinate, reported Daily News.
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell ordered Lt. Briceño fired from the department in late November after an NYPD administrative trial judge found him guilty of sexual harassment, display of offensive materials and prohibited conduct, according to the recently published decision.
Before the sexual harassment charges were filed, Briceño was the Integrity Control Officer in the New York Police Department’s “Office of Equity and Inclusion,” where he was tasked with “developing and implementing sexual harassment programs and policies.” Department sexual harassment,” according to findings prepared by Deputy Deputy Commissioner for Trials Josh Kleiman.
According to the indictment, on October 20, 2021, Briceño began sharing sexually suggestive text messages with a female subordinate officer.
The unidentified officer, who testified in Briceño’s departmental trial, played along with the text messages, but left him the next day that she did not want a physical relationship with him. Even so, the text messages continued, she denounced her.
In a text message exchange when the subordinate said she would wear a specific shirt the following week, Briceño wrote, “I’ll have you take it off in front of me,” according to the judge’s report. “I’ll take (your bra) off,” he continued to write. “You’d like that if I do it with my mouth.” And the bullying continued. “Come sit on my lap,” he wrote to her. “We can do it in (the) office.”
At his departmental trial, Briceño said he did not consider “touching inappropriate” and claimed he was not guilty of misconduct because he and his subordinate “were involved in a consensual and flirtatious relationship.” “At trial, however, (Briceño) admitted that, with hindsight, he may have been wrong,” the report states.
Briceño was the second member of the NYPD’s “Equal Employment Opportunity Division” accused of harassment in 2021. A few months earlier, Deputy Inspector James Kobel, then commander of that division -a subunit of the Office of Equity and Inclusion- was fired after an investigation revealed he made hundreds of racist and sexist posts on an anonymous online site.
Members of the Lieutenant’s Benevolent Association declined Thursday to comment on Briceño’s firing.
In the summer of 2021, María Méndez, a former Dominican NYPD police officer, filed a lawsuit alleging that she was repeatedly raped, sodomized, and mentally tormented by a group of officers over the course of five years.
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