NYPD officers charged with raping drunk woman

A New York police officer called to help a drunken woman get home safely has been accused of raping her as she lay face down in her bed, semiconscious and covered in vomit while his partner acted as a lookout, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata were suspended from duty and were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of rape, burglary and official misconduct in the Dec. 6, 2008, incident in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.

Their attorneys said Monday they expected their clients to plead not guilty. Moreno’s attorney Stephen Worth said his client was eager to confront the evidence against him. Mata’s attorney, Edward Mandery, said his client denied the allegations.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who rarely speaks on pending cases involving officers because he might have to make internal decisions, called the allegations “disgraceful” and said he did not want the charges to tarnish the department’s reputation for helping people.

“This is a shocking aberration in stark contrast to the outstanding work that the men and women of the New York City police department do every day on the streets of our city,” Kelly said. “The public needs to know that the police are there to protect them. And I believe that they do.”

The two officers were working the late shift in the 9th Precinct that night as the woman was out drinking with friends at a bar in Brooklyn. Her blood alcohol was at least double the legal limit and possibly more, investigators said, when her friends put her in a taxi and told the driver to take her to her apartment in Manhattan.

When the driver got to her address, she was so drunk she couldn’t get out of the taxi, so he called 911 for help, prosecutors said. Mata, 27, and Moreno, 41, responded within minutes. Surveillance tape shows them helping the woman into her building and leaving a few minutes later.