An NYPD sergeant claims bosses forced him to undergo a psychiatric exam — and plotted to break into his apartment — in retaliation for his filing a complaint accusing cops of getting drunk on duty at the Electric Zoo music festival.
Sgt. Jose Dume never set foot on Randalls Island during the three-day September music bash — he was on leave in Europe helping his girlfriend’s family relocate from war-torn Ukraine.
But last week bosses filed departmental charges against the 11-year NYPD veteran for taking the leave of absence from Manhattan Narcotics North without approval — an allegation Dume denies and says is part of the retaliation he is fighting.
Dume makes the accusations of retribution in a lawsuit filed against the city in Manhattan Supreme Court Sunday.
“Rather than champion his courage, and weed out the bad actors within the unit, the NYPD chose to retaliate against my client,” John Scola, Dume’s lawyer, told the Daily News.
The accusations are just the latest controversy emerging from the Police Department’s presence at the music festival on Randall’s Island.
Last month, three Manhattan North Narcotics detectives were indicted on grand larceny charges for allegedly breaking into the VIP section and trying to steal two bottles of $1,500 Ace of Spades, the champagne brand owned by Jay Z.
The NYPD had previously transferred a dozen detectives and supervisors from the same unit as part of an internal probe into cops drinking on duty at the event.
Dume first got entangled in the controversy when he received a message while in Europe on the first day of the festival from his supervisor, Sgt. Sean Pitman, who Dume says wanted him to reach out to a party promoter friend involved in the event.
Pitman was hoping Dume’s friend could provide Manhattan North Narcotics officers VIP access at Electric Zoo so they could talk to women, according to the suit.
“I didn’t answer,” Dume told the Daily News. “I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Plus I’m a very private person. I don’t like to mix my personal life with work.”
As the festival unfolded over that weekend, a group chat among narcotics officers exploded with stories of cops going to the concert and getting drunk, with one supposedly having sex with a woman in a bathroom and others being accused by Electric Zoo workers of stealing booze.
Numerous messages from the group chat were deleted by Pitman later that weekend, according to the suit. Screenshots shared with the Daily News appear to confirm that.
Dume filed an anonymous complaint a few days after the festvial with the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau in which he reported, based on what he read in the messages, that fellow narcotics cops went to the festival, got drunk while armed and drove other drunk cops home using department cars. Dume also reported one cop having bathroom sex and said that Sgt. Pitman told subordinates they could attend on duty without supervision.
Not long after filing the complaint, Dume, still overseas, had a phone conversation with another supervisor, Deputy Inspector John Wilson, who asked who approved Dume’s time off.
“I thought you were dead,” Wilson said, according to the suit. “What is a Dominican doing in Ukraine?”
Dume took offense to the comment referencing his Dominican heritage and later reported it.
Dume told Wilson his time off was approved by Lt. Joel Ramirez and Inspector Peter Fiorillo. Documents he showed the Daily News indicate his time off request had been approved.
A couple of days later, the suit alleges, Pitman called Dume, wanting to know where he kept his evaluation because Wilson wanted his recent grade lowered from 4.5 to 2.5 out of 5.
Evaluations for undercovers are filed on paper, not electronically. Worried that supervisors suspected he had filed the IAB complaint and were retaliating against him, Dume told Pitman his evaluation was at home, then had a trusted colleague take it from where it really was — in his desk at work.
Later, he heard from colleagues that supervisors Wilson and Fiorillo had sent cops to his home to try to get the evaluation even if it meant breaking in to get it, the lawsuit says. He said that effort spooked his girlfriend enough that she and their son, now 4, relocated to North Carolina.
According to Dume, though, the cops had trouble determining his address and even reached out to an uncle of Dume’s to try and pin it down. The uncle did not cooperate and Dume’s apartment was never broken into.
When Dume returned to New York the retaliation continued, he says. He was denied a vacation request and given a “punishment post” — standing guard outside a building his entire tour.
He complained to a Detective Bureau inspector about what he considered retaliation, including the Dominican comment — and was quickly ordered to undergo a psychological examination in which a doctor a day later declared him fit to carry a gun, according to a department doctor’s memo.
Despite being under investigation for his leave in Europe, Dume was promoted from detective to sergeant in December and is now assigned to patrol in a Manhattan Housing Bureau unit.
He is glad to be out of narcotics.
“Going through this was nerve-racking — scary,” Dume said. “I didn’t know how far they’d go with this.”
His ordeal is not over. Dume plans to fight the disciplinary charges he was slapped with last week accusing him of being absent without permission during his Europe trip.
The matter “has now culminated in fraudulent disciplinary charges that could result in him being demoted from the rank of sergeant,” his lawyer Scola said.
Ramirez, one of the supervisors who approved Dume’s leave to Europe, was also hit with departmental charges, according to Ramirez’s lawyer, Eric Sanders, who said one of the charges is for failing to supervise Dume by letting him take the time off.
“We’ll see them in the trial room,” Sanders said, referring to an NYPD disciplinary trial where Ramirez will fight the departmental charges. “And we’re going to file a federal lawsuit about the larger corruption problem in the unit.”
NYPD officials declined to answer questions about the allegations, saying the department does not comment on pending litigation.
But in a response to a complaint Scola earlier filed with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission, the department denied Wilson mentioned Dume’s Dominican heritage or that he sought to get Dume declared psychologically unfit for duty.
Pitman and Fiorillo — who is accused by Dume in his lawsuit of requiring undercovers to meet an arrest quota of at least three felonies a month — did not respond to requests for comment last week. Wilson referred all questions to the NYPD press office.
___
© 2023 New York Daily News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
