Cop Pleads Guilty To Unlawful Washington Heights Arrest: DA

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — An NYPD officer who made up false statements to back up a 2014 arrest of a Washington Heights man pleaded guilty Wednesday to perjury and official misconduct, the Manhattan District Attorney's office announced.

Sasha Cordoba, 35, will spend 60 days in jail for conducting an illegal search leading to the arrest of one man and then lying to her commanding officers and to a grand jury about probable cause, prosecutors said.

On November 6, 2014, Cordoba and another NYPD officer Kevin Desormeau arrested a 38-year-old man for gun possession inside of a residential building on West 175th Street, prosecutors said. The officers later claimed that they had seen the man threaten somebody with a firearm and discovered the weapon in the man's waistband during the arrest.

The two cops repeated those claims in an official criminal complaint, in a search warrant application and in front of a grand jury, prosecutors said. The 38-year-old man was later indicted on weapons possession charges.

The charges were thrown out when interviews, surveillance video, and text messages sent by Desormeau revealed that the two officers had fabricated their story, prosecutors said. Cordoba and Desormeau were indicted in February 2017.

"Now more than ever, it is essential that members of law enforcement build positive and productive relationships with the communities we serve – but we can only do so to the extent that we earn the public’s trust," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., said in a statement. "These defendants have violated that trust, using falsified documents, perjured testimony, and an unauthorized search to bring about an unlawful arrest."

Desormeau was convicted of perjury and other crimes in January for lying about a Jamaica, Queens drug arrest from 2014.

Photo by Patch