An ex-NYPD detective says he was fired on trumped-up public masturbation charges just weeks before his scheduled retirement, according to a new federal lawsuit.
Robert Francis, 49, a Jamaican immigrant and US Army veteran, said his termination followed years of discrimination and harassment within the ranks of the department, starting with his transfer to the Internal Affairs Bureau, blaming the NYPD for costing him his career, his marriage, and forcing him to declare bankruptcy.
“If we can’t trust the trusted, then who can we trust?” Francis told The Post this week. “The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau is a unit entrusted to fight and root out corruption within the NYPD, but what happens when those we entrust are the most corrupted?”
Francis joined New York’s Finest in 2000, starting at Brooklyn’s 60th and 71st precincts,, and was transferred to IAB in 2005.
“White officers received preferential treatment from supervisors in that the black and other foreign-born officers were given less desirable tasks, including being assigned the more laborious task of handling the majority of the new calls from complaints that came into the Command Center,” he said in the lawsuit.
But Francis was told not to make trouble and bided his time until 2007, when he was promoted to detective investigator — then finally filed a harassment complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Office.
“Almost immediately, plaintiff noticed that he was under close scrutiny of his supervisors who subjected plaintiff to unexpected tour changes and plaintiff was being placed in the Minor Violations Log for very minor deficiencies, and plaintiff was ordered to handle the most incoming calls, regardless if other investigators were available,” the suit said.
With his complaints going nowhere, Francis said he decided to retire in May 2017, when he would be eligible. But that’s when things really went sour.
A licensed pilot, Francis routinely flew to Republic Airport on Long Island to meet up with a Rockville woman he befriended. On March 25, 2017 he got lost while visiting the woman and was approached by Rockville Center cops and told he was a suspect in four public lewdness complaints that involved a man masturbating in local yards.
Although the description of the suspects did not fit Francis — three of them were white — he said he was coerced into signing a confession which he says he did not read. He said an NYPD captain sent to the Long Island station house told him he would be fired and lose his pension if he didn’t sign, the suit said.
Instead, he was stripped of his pension just weeks shy of retirement.
Francis was acquitted of one count of public lewdness at a trial, but was found guilty of a trespass violation at a non-jury trial. Another 16 charges were dropped.
With his life now ruined, he’s asking for unspecified damages for conspiracy, false arrest, imprisonment, and civil rights violations.
“This is yet another of my cases evincing the racist weaponizing of the awesome powers wielded by the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, under Deputy Commissioner of Internal Affairs Joe Reznick, against minority officers who dare to expose corruption or other racist animus of members of the Internal Affairs Bureau,” His lawyer, Joe Murray, told The Post.
In a statement this week, the city Law Department would only say that it “will carefully review these allegations and respond accordingly.”