NYPD detective arrested on sexual misconduct charges

New York, May 19 (ANI): An NYPD narcotics detective has been charged with demanding sex from at least two women he had arrested - assaulting one in the stationhouse bathroom.

Detective Oscar Sandino, a 13-year NYPD veteran, was also accused of coercing a third woman to have sex with him in exchange for help with her cousin's criminal case on May 18.

According to court papers, the alleged attacks date back to 2006 when he was assigned to the Queens North Narcotics Bureau.

Prosecutors said that in August of that year, he had sex with a woman whose cousin he had arrested after falsely telling her he faced a long prison sentence.

In February 2008, while arresting a woman and her boyfriend on drug charges, he allegedly took the woman into a bedroom and forced her to undress.

When he brought the woman to the 110th Precinct for booking, Sandino warned she would lose her children unless she had sex with him.

Sandino allegedly took the woman into the bathroom, ordered her to pull down her pants and molested her.

According to a lawsuit she filed, Sandino said "Wow, you have an earring down there."

"Now I know I can trust you," he allegedly told her after the assault.

The victim reported Sandino to the Internal Affairs Bureau and investigators gathered text messages, phone records and taped conversations to corroborate the allegations.

Federal prosecutors Pamela Chen and Licha Nyiendo said the evidence is "substantial and irrefutable".

"The persistent and repetitive nature of the defendant's misconduct demonstrates that he is a sexual predator," the New York Daily News quoted them as saying in court papers.

In a third attack last September, Sandino allegedly took a handcuffed woman who had been arrested for disorderly conduct into a private room at the stationhouse and made her bare her breasts.

If convicted of the federal civil rights violations, Sandino faces up to three years in prison.

"This prosecution affirms our commitment to vigorously protect the constitutional right of individuals to be free from sexual misconduct by officers whose duty it is to uphold the law," Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch stated.

Sandino, 37, was scheduled to appear before a magistrate in Brooklyn Federal Court on May 18. (ANI)