A former Annapolis Police officer, accused last year of failing to investigate rape and sexual abuse cases, was charged by state prosecutors last month, nearly a year after some of the same criminal allegations were dismissed by an Anne Arundel judge.
Gwynne Tavel, a 35-year-old who served as a corporal with the department before resigning last December after his criminal case was thrown out, faces five new misconduct in office charges filed by Maryland’s Office of the State Prosecutor.
Last October, Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Mark Crooks dismissed Tavel’s criminal case, brought earlier in 2021, after an internal investigation by police found he failed to investigate rape and sexual abuse cases and then tried to hide the case files. Crooks found that the case was based on admissions Tavel made to a police internal affairs investigator, which were not admissible in a criminal case and violated Tavel’s constitutional right against self-incrimination.
After the case was dismissed, Anne Arundel prosecutors said they were free to file new charges or appeal the decision.
State Prosecutor Charlton Howard III, who leads the office that tries cases of misconduct by public officials, declined to comment on the matter. Andrew Clayton White, a Baltimore attorney who represented Tavel last year and is representing him in the new case
The new case focuses on three of the four sex offense cases that investigators said Tavel failed to investigate. They also alleged that he tried to cover up the failure by closing the cases.
In one case, investigators said Tavel had identified a suspect after a woman reported she passed out after drinking and woke up to a person having sex with her in August 2018, then passed out again and woke up naked in a closet with her assailant. Tavel offered the woman a photo array of potential suspects, but the woman could not identify the man in the photos. He then closed the case in April 2020, investigators said.
After Annapolis Sgt. Andrew Ascione discovered the four sexual assault cases Tavel appeared to have marked closed, inactive or unfounded, the agency reassigned the 2018 case to another detective, according to charging papers filed in the new case. In September 2021, the victim’s mother told the new detective that Tavel had asked her if she believed her daughter’s allegations, and said “he would consider pressing charges” against the victim for making a false statement during the rape investigation, charging papers say.
Ascione discovered the cases in July 2020 after cleaning out a file cabinet meant for inactive cases. In the cabinet, eventually destined for a long-term storage facility, he found a folder that was “unlike the others” that contained a partial rape investigation Tavel had been assigned in 2018 after Anne Arundel County Police forwarded the matter to Annapolis.
Ascione and another detective then spoke to the victim of that case, according to charging papers. She said she had never been contacted by Tavel, or anyone from Annapolis Police.
A third sex offense case referenced in the charges against Tavel involved two juveniles in 2019. Prosecutors said in charging papers a new detective assigned to the case found a Child Protective Services report from December 2019 that said one of the juveniles disclosed being sexually abused. Tavel had closed it as unfounded in May 2020 and wrote there was no disclosure of sexual abuse, prosecutors wrote.
The charges filed on Sept. 26 don’t mention a fourth case that was part of the original misconduct allegations against Tavel. In November 2017, a woman reported being raped by a man she met in a recovery house. Tavel interviewed the victim and wrote that he found inconsistencies in her statement, Sgt. Hil O’Herlihy, a professional standards official within the department, wrote in charging papers from last year’s case. Tavel was able to identify the suspect but didn’t interview him. Tavel then marked it closed in April 2020, police wrote.
Tavel is scheduled for a status hearing in Anne Arundel Circuit Court on Dec. 9.
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