Crooked Coney Island Cops Raped Me In The Chipotle Parking Lot, Teen Says In $50M Lawsuit

CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN — Highly disturbing rape accusations against two detectives on the NYPD's Brooklyn South Narcotics team continued to gain steam this week, as the cops' alleged teen victim came forward on social media and NYPD top brass fended off questions about the case at an otherwise rosy press conference on the city's record-low crime rate.

"It's an ongoing investigation," Police Commissioner James O'Neill told prying reporters Tuesday. "We have a sergeant modified and the two detectives are modified, and [the department] is working closely with the Kings County DA's office."

In short: NYPD detectives Edward Martins and Richard Hall are accused of mouth-raping, and one of them vaginally raping, a handcuffed 18-year-old in a Chipotle parking lot — inside their NYPD vehicle, while on duty.

According to Michael David, the young woman's attorney, the cops pulled over the victim and two of her guy friends as they drove through Calvert Vaux Park, right across the creek from Coney Island, on the night of Friday, Sept. 15.

The cops found Prozac on one of her friends, "but he had prescription," David said in a phone interview. One of the officers then turned to the young woman to ask why she was scratching her top, and if she was hiding something, according to her attorney.

Martins and Hall "forced her to expose herself" to show she had no drugs, the attorney said — and even though she didn't have anything on her, they allegedly "took her out of the car, arrested her, handcuffed her and took her to a parking lot" in their unmarked, black patrol van.

"That's where they raped her," he said.

While in this parking lot — the one in front of Chipotle on Cropsey Avenue — the two detectives took turns forcing the teen to give them oral sex inside the Dodge minivan, her attorney said. One of them then raped her vaginally, he said. She was allegedly handcuffed the whole time.

"This is one of the most egregious crimes in the history of the NYPD," David said Tuesday, as he prepared to file his second "notice of claim" with the Comptroller's Office.

When his client officially files suit, he said, she'll be demanding $50 million in damages from the city.

"It's not the money," David said. "It sends a message as to the enormity of this atrocious, brutal crime, so that hopefully it'll never happen again. It's not the money. It's the attention."

The victim was later able to identify one of her NYPD attackers in a lineup, David said.

Martins and Hall are still on salary with the department. However, they've been stripped of their guns and badges and placed on "modified" assignment, aka desk duty — along with their supervisor, named by DNAinfo as Sgt. John Espey, a 22-year veteran of the department — while Internal Affairs investigates what happened in the Chipotle parking lot that night.

City prosecutors with the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office are also investigating the young woman's story and deciding whether to get involved in the case, a law-enforcement source told Patch.

On social media, the victim calls herself Anna Chambers ("not her real name," according to her lawyer). In the week since her damning allegations against two Brooklyn South Narcotics cops surfaced in the press, Chambers has been sharing the various news stories on her alleged ordeal. "These cops have been getting away with way too much. This is unexeptable [stet]," she wrote beneath one story.

In a recent comment on Chambers' Facebook page, a friend called her "a good kid from the neighborhood," and said she hoped her alleged rapists would "rot in jail when this goes to court." To which Chambers replied: "Appreciate it thank you... I f---ing prayyyy they get what they deserve."

And through her lawyer, the 18-year-old told the New York Daily News: “I’m completely brutalized by the rape. My life is in shatters. Now every time I see any police, I’m in a panic.”

The New York Post first reported Chambers' startling rape claims last week. At that time, the newspaper's "police sources" confirmed that Martins and Hall had sex with their detainee, but argued the sex was consensual.

"When she saw that, that just made her completely emotional," her lawyer told Patch. "She got raped. This was sexual assault. She's 5-foot-2, 100 pounds. Each cop is over six feet tall. Both had guns on them. ... It was not consensual."

After around 45 minutes of abuse, Martins and Hall dropped their victim off a block or two from the NYPD's 60th Precinct station house, according to her attorney. "She was hysterical," David said.

Luckily, the victim's friend, who had been looking for her at the station house, spotted her standing on the street. "She got in her friend's car and said, 'I got f---ed,'" her lawyer said.

As soon as she got home that night, her mom drove her to Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, where doctors tested her for signs of rape and called the police to come interview her, according to David.

"She came out positive for DNA — we believe we have the DNA of the cop," the lawyer said.

If the young woman's family friend hadn't connected her with a private lawyer around two weeks after the alleged attack, David said he's skeptical NYPD and city officials would have handled her claims properly themselves.

"Have they been arrested yet?" one reporter asked Commissioner O'Neill at Tuesday's press conference. "And if not, are you able to explain why?"

For now, O'Neill answered, all the department can say publicly is that the accused detectives — and their supervisor — have been pulled from the field, and that an investigation is ongoing. But "if this case turns out to be that it actually happened," he said, "it again goes to the trust we've been trying to build over the last three years. So I'd be extremely disappointed."

The NYPD's top cop added: "Not all 36,000 cops deserve to wear their shield around their neck. And if these two detectives did something wrong, then they'll pay the price."

This story has been updated. Lead image via Google Maps