NYPD Officer Maribel Sarante is accusing her boss, Sgt. Freddy Lopez, of demanding sexual favors including a threesome with him and his wife.
He allegedly fired back with accusations about her time sheets when she refused. According to The New York Post, Sarante has made these claims in court as a precursor to a $15 million lawsuit.
“When he became my squad sergeant, he started making comments and asked me if I would do a threesome with his wife,” Sarante said. “He knew I was married and had kids, and I wouldn’t answer him.”
“The co-workers would call him ‘Larry Love,'” testified Officer Kervelin Compres during the trial. “He mainly called himself LL. He’d say, ‘You know you want LL.'”
“I hated being at work,” added Compres. “I just wanted him to leave me alone. I was a hard worker. I didn’t want to come to work anymore.”
The claim also suggests that Lopez’s lude and unproffesional behavior was a regular occurance.
His sexually explicit jokes and vulgar demands of female officers were noted in the claim. Lopez was also retaliatory when Sarante refused his advances: he attempted to have her suspended for “stealing time” with her partner from the department.
Sarante had previously filed complaints against Lopez but the department had found the matters not “serious” enough for disciplinary action. Serante ultimately decided to sue Lopez to prevent this from happening to more women in the future.
“When you work for the Police Department, you’re afraid to say anything. I got sick over all this.
I lost 25 pounds,” she said. “I am hoping no other female should have to go through what I went through in the Police Department … A lot of females are afraid to say anything.”
“Sexual harassment is a huge problem within the Police Department, and they don’t take it seriously, and that’s why it keeps on happening,” said Eric Sanders, Sarante’s lawyer.
“We joked around,” said Lopez in his defense, who also claimed Sarante’s personal problems had encumbered her performance. “No cops wanted to work with her … She didn’t want to be a police officer.
I didn’t want to deal with her and neither did other officers.”
The NYPD has declined to comment on the situation. Testimony in the trial is set to continue next month.
