The ex-wife of an NYPD officer involved in policing mass events and protests alleges in a complaint filed with internal investigators that the cop had her unjustly arrested by fellow officers and held for more than a day as a tactic in their contentious child custody and visitation rights battle.
Sharon Maynard, a speech pathologist who works with the city Education Department, detailed an ordeal that she says followed after her former husband, Officer Damian Douglas, filed a complaint against her for aggravated harassment. That sent officers from the 69th Precinct in Canarsie, Brooklyn, to her home last June 26, landing her in custody for 25 hours.
The harassment complaint, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News, centered on a text message Maynard, 39, sent earlier that day.
According to a letter asking the NYPD to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest, Maynard alleged — based on what her two sons told her — that Douglas and his mother were verbally abusing the boys; it also said she had filed a complaint with the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau against Douglas,
“I lost something that day — the whole ordeal,” Maynard recalled. “Being frisked, arrested in front of my kids, fiancé and neighbors, sitting in a cell with no windows. I was just left there, I didn’t know what was going on.”
The Brooklyn district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Maynard and the charge was dropped, records show. A Family Court judge, on Sept. 12, also dismissed the allegation in the former couple’s custody dispute.
Joel Berger, Maynard’s lawyer, called the arrest a “ridiculous charade.”
“What Douglas and his cohorts did here is simply beyond the pale,” Berger said. “An officer used his status and influence to get his ex-wife arrested for sending a perfectly legitimate text message. And officers aided and abetted him, serving as his accomplices.”
On Tuesday, Berger sent a letter to NYPD Internal Affairs Chief Miguel Iglesias asking to meet with him and reopen an investigation of Douglas and the officers involved in the arrest.
Maynard had previously withdrawn her initial Internal Affairs Bureau complaint while preserving the right to refile it after it was assigned to a lower-level staffer and ignored it as a “he said, she said,” Berger wrote in the letter.
Maynard also filed a claim against the city for false arrest seeking damages for lost work and emotional trauma. On March 5, the city agreed to pay her $65,000 to settle the claim.
On Thursday, shortly after an inquiry from The News, the NYPD placed Douglas on desk duty without his guns and shield and reopened its Internal Affairs Bureau investigation.
Reached by phone Thursday, Douglas said, “Wow, she went to the media,” and referred The News to his lawyer.
His lawyer Akram Louis said Maynard’s allegations are “completely false.”
“She started the whole thing. She was trying to get him fired and he was protecting himself,” Louis said. “He put the police on notice she was harassing him. He wants more time with the kids and she’s refusing.”
The episode unfolded amid a dispute over visitation, an issue the two sides have since resolved.
Douglas, 39, joined the NYPD in 2010, making 65 misdemeanor arrests and 18 felony arrests in that 13-year period, NYPD records show. Douglas, who is 6-feet-1 and weighs roughly 300 pounds, is currently assigned to the Critical Response Command, a “permanent cadre of hand-selected officers devoted to counterterrorism,” the NYPD website states.
In 2023, he made $101,590 plus an additional $17,962 for 248 hours of overtime, the records show.
Douglas and Maynard were married in 2009, separated in 2017 and divorced in January 2021. They have two sons, 11 and 15. Maynard was awarded residential custody with Douglas granted visitation rights.
Maynard’s June 26 text message, including in the Internal Affairs Bureau letter, accused Douglas and his mother of “emotionally and verbally” abusing her sons. Douglas lives with his mother.
“The boys are both shaken and traumatized due to being yelled at. … I don’t see why this seemed appropriate to the two of you,” Maynard wrote about 4:45 p.m. “If my children don’t feel safe when they’re with their father and grandmother, then I will do anything to ensure their safety.”
Maynard, who has a master’s degree and no criminal record, went on to write that she filed a complaint with the NYPD against Douglas and said she was intending to file for a temporary restraining order against Douglas’ mother.
Douglas lives in the 69th Precinct, but he drove just under an hour to the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, to file his harassment complaint, records show.
Officers from the 69th Precinct then appeared at Maynard’s home and took her, handcuffed, to the 103rd Precinct stationhouse, then to the 69th Precinct stationhouse and finally to Brooklyn Central Booking.
Berger writes the officers “marched” her out of her home in front of her fiancé and five children, but admitted the cops knew nothing about the circumstances of the arrest, just that they were ordered to make it.
One day after the arrest, Douglas filed a Family Court petition against Maynard. A copy of that filing shows that Douglas claimed he had not filed any criminal complaint.
Under the law, a charge of aggravated harassment requires evidence of conduct or acts “which alarm or seriously annoy another person and which serve no legitimate purpose.”
“No rational police officer would have arrested someone because of this kind of text message,” Berger writes.
One day after Maynard’s arrest, Douglas filed the Family Court petition against Maynard that was dismissed Sept. 12.
”Since the arrest. I am scared to even engage him in conversation for fear of him claiming harassment and having me arrested again,” Maynard said. “It’s been almost a year, and my heart still jumps every time I hear my doorbell ring at home. It’s just been very stressful; I just want peace.”
___
© 2024 New York Daily News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
