The Queens District Attorney has indicted two NYPD detectives accused of making up a story to justify a bogus drug arrest that landed an innocent 47-year-old man in Rikers Island for more than six weeks, officials said Tuesday.
A grand jury found enough evidence to charge Detective Kevin Desormeau with first-degree perjury, offering a false instrument for filing, official misconduct and making a punishable false written statement, officials said.
His partner, Detective Sasha (Cordoba) Neve is charged with official misconduct and offering a false instrument for filing, officials said.
Both are accused of falsely arresting Roosevelt McCoy, who they claimed was dealing crack to a woman on 108th Ave. and Guy R. Brewer Blvd. in Jamaica on Aug. 28, 2014.
After arresting him, the detectives claimed they found 7 grams of cocaine in his waistband, officials said.
McCoy was arrested for selling drugs and ordered held at Rikers Island at his arraignment, officials said.
Desormeau repeated the lies against McCoy in a criminal complaint, in front of a grand jury and at a suppression hearing, officials said.
Charges against McCoy were ultimately dismissed in March 2016, when his attorney Gabriel Harvis showed the DA’s office a video surveillance feed from inside a restaurant that showed McCoy playing pool the entire time the detectives said he was outside selling drugs.
The surveillance video also showed the two detectives enter the restaurant and bar while McCoy is playing pool and then escort him outside.
“He was lucky,” Harvis said about the video surveillance that exonerated his client last month, which the Daily News exclusively reported. “But I can’t imagine how many New Yorkers were not so lucky and they are sitting in jail.”
A call to Harvis on Tuesday was not immediately returned.
McCoy and Harvis filed a lawsuit against the two cops, which last November cost the city a $547,500 settlement.
Court filings at the time indicated that the Queens District DA was seeking to indict both detectives.
The duo was expected to be arraigned on the fraud charges on Tuesday.
If convicted, Desormeau faces seven years in prison, officials said. Neve faces four years.
Sources said other cases in Queens involving the two detectives, who were assigned to the Queens South gang squad, are being reviewed.
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is also investigating the two detectives.
The two have also been accused of concocting lies to justify a gun possession case in Manhattan, officials said.
