City Probes NYPD's Handling Of Revenge Porn Complaint Against Cop

ASTORIA, QUEENS — The city is investigating allegations that the NYPD shrugged off a Queens woman's revenge porn accusation against a police officer in 2017.

The probe, which began in early October and is being handled by the city's Department of Investigation, hinges on Astoria resident Valentina Veleva's claim that an off-duty police officer non-consensually recorded her performing a sex act on him, then threatened to distribute it, according to Department of Investigation emails and police and court records.

Veleva specifically requested that her name be used in this article.

Her allegation became the basis of an internal investigation by the NYPD, but a police sergeant deemed it "unsubstantiated" and closed the case at the end of October, more than 2 1/2 years after she reported the incident, according to records obtained by Patch.

The cop, Miguel Delacruz, works for the NYPD as a patrol officer, a spokesperson for the department confirmed. Several attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

Queens prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges against him, a spokesperson for the district attorney's office confirmed. It's unclear whether the NYPD ever disciplined him in connection with Veleva's allegation, because police misconduct records are largely kept confidential.

"The matter was under internal review," NYPD Sgt. Jessica McRorie, a spokesperson for the department, confirmed to Patch in response to an emailed list of questions. "After a thorough investigation, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations."

Investigators assigned to the Department of Investigation's bureau, which reviews police misconduct, are looking into the woman’s claims and into the NYPD's internal investigation into the incident, according to emails reviewed by Patch.

The emails indicate that the Department of Investigation might separately probe Queens prosecutors' treatment of the case, but there is no indication that investigators are doing so at this time.

"The allegations were thoroughly investigated, and there was insufficient evidence to go forward with charges," a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney's Office said by phone. "The city and state's revenge porn law does not apply due to the fact that this incident occurred prior to the law being enacted."

Diane Struzzi, the Department of Investigation’s director of communications, declined to comment for this article.

In an interview with Patch, Veleva said she had known Delacruz through mutual friends for about a year when they hooked up at his Jackson Heights apartment the night of March 13, 2017.

Everything they did was consensual, she said. But the day after, she said,she was shocked when he told her over the phone that he had a video of her performing oral sex on him.

"He told me he had cameras that recorded my ass and I better keep my mouth shut," Veleva said in an interview, adding that he told her he'd done it before.

Veleva said she thought he was just trying to scare her but that he then sent her the video. It was 12 seconds long.

"Got more," he wrote in a text message.

"I just dropped my phone," she said of her reaction to the video.

She said she immediately reported the threat to her local police station, the NYPD’s 114th Precinct. In the domestic incident report that followed, an NYPD sergeant wrote that the cop told Veleva to stop contacting him, sent her the video, then called her and “stated he will distribute video if she continues to contact him,” the report says.

In a box on the domestic incident report marked “suspect threats,” the sergeant checked “no.”

McRorie, the NYPD spokesperson, did not respond to emailed questions asking why police said on the report that the suspect didn’t threaten Veleva.

The police directed Veleva to the Queens County Family Court, where a referee granted her an order of protection against Delacruz and ordered him to temporarily turn in any firearms in his possession, court records show.

“I’m scared that he might hurt me once the investigation begins or after that or take [sic] someone else do that,” Veleva wrote in her family court petition. “I’m scared he will distribute the video recording from that night just to hurt me and my reputation.”

During a family court hearing at the end of 2017, the officer pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The court referee encouraged Veleva to agree to a no-fault settlement, she said, but she refused. She said she had been meeting with prosecutors in the Queens District Attorney’s Office, hoping they would bring criminal charges, but she thought they were giving her the runaround.

Meanwhile, a Brooklyn police sergeant, Cliff Nieves, was working on the NYPD’s internal investigation into the case. According to Veleva's retelling, the sergeant told her there were two major problems with her case: Her face wasn't visible in the video, which she had sent to the police, and the cop's threats hadn’t been recorded.

Then, in September 2018, the Queens District Attorney’s Office announced a bombshell: 49 people, including an ex-NYPD vice detective and seven active police officers, were being charged with running a sprawling prostitution and gambling ring. The product of a three-year investigation, the scandal drew comparisons to 1950s-era corruption in the NYPD. Implicated in it was Nieves, who had been investigating Veleva’s case.

In a phone call with Veleva that month, which she recorded and provided to Patch, the chief of the public integrity bureau in the Queens District Attorney's Office explained that they'd delayed her case instead of transferring it to someone else to avoid tipping Nieves off to the criminal enterprise case they were building.

"That's one of the reasons why we had to delay things," the chief, James Leander, said in the call. "We handled his case and we were aware — we couldn't interfere with the case that you just read about by doing something and have him be the officer in charge of your case."

After Nieves' indictment, police transferred Veleva's case to a new investigator, emails show. Nieves' case is still pending, a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney's Office told Patch.

Frustrated by the inaction on her case, Veleva filed a civil lawsuit, filed a complaint with the New York Attorney General's Office and kept pressing Queens prosecutors to pursue charges.

On May 9, 2019, the family court referee dismissed her case, writing that Veleva had "failed to prove by fair preponderance of the credible evidence" that Delacruz had "committed any family offense," court records show.

Several months later, in September, Veleva said she sat for a recorded interview with the department's internal affairs bureau. The police department's 18-month deadline for bringing administrative charges of misconduct against an officer had already passed.

Around the same time, the Department of Investigation started reviewing Veleva's allegations on a referral from the NYPD's internal affairs bureau, an officer there told her. Investigators reached out to her to collect evidence, including a copy of the video, and requested records from the NYPD's internal investigation of the case, emails show.

The police department closed its internal investigation into Veleva's allegations on Oct. 25, according to an official disposition letter issued to Veleva. A police sergeant later wrote in an email to Veleva that, in response to a request from the Department of Investigation, the NYPD would hand over a copy of the case to the agency.

Asked why she decided to come forward publicly with her case, Veleva said her mother, a doctor, taught her the importance of reporting abusive behavior: "A person who abuses, they always escalate, because they think they can get away with that," Veleva said.

"I was so proud that I did the right thing, and they took that away from me," she added. "They were not fighting for justice."