City settles suit
Rape victim alleged police failed to come to her aid
Rape victim alleged police failed to help her.
The city of Albany will pay $200,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a woman who was raped after three police officers failed to come to her aid when her friend called 911 and warned a dispatcher that she was incapacitated and being held in an apartment by a knife-wielding man.
None of the officers were disciplined for their actions during the incident, according to the city’s response to a request for copies of their disciplinary records.
The 26-year-old woman was raped in November 2017 at an apartment on Eagle Street, just across from the governor’s mansion. She had been drinking at the nearby Hill Street Cafe before the attack.
The 36-year-old suspect, Abdul Trowell, who has a lengthy criminal history, was later convicted of kidnapping and rape. He is serving a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
The incident began when Trowell approached the woman and her friend, a Glenmont man who was 31 at the time, and offered to drive their vehicle for them because they had become too intoxicated. However, Trowell drove them to his nearby apartment and carried the woman up to his apartment, telling her friend: “She is going with me. I need to take care of her.”
The Glenmont man followed them into the apartment and sat next to the woman on a couch, but was in and out of consciousness. He was suddenly startled by Trowell, who was standing over him with a knife and ordering him to leave, according to police reports.
The Glenmont man left the apartment, called 911 and told a dispatcher that Trowell “pulled a knife on him and there’s a girl that’s intoxicated and (he) knows (the guy is) gonna try to rape her.” He added the woman was intoxicated and that Trowell is a “loose cannon” and asked for officers to come “as soon as possible.”
The dispatcher, Joseph Lee, did not classify the call for help as an emergency or a “weapons call,” according to the lawsuit, even though the caller had told him Trowell had a weapon and was going to rape the intoxicated woman. The dispatcher failed to tell dispatch or the responding officers about the caller’s statements about a weapon or fears of an impending rape.
The officers who responded to the apartment, according to the lawsuit, were Nick Schuler, Jonathan Jordan and Jarrod Jourdin.
“Trowell refused to allow (the police) into the apartment, instead introducing (the officers) to his pet rats while they stood outside his apartment,” the lawsuit states. “Rather than credit (her friend’s) warnings, call a supervisor, or enter the apartment, defendants Schuler, Buhner, and Jourdin ordered (the friend) ... to leave the scene, leaving (the victim) alone, unconscious, and unprotected inside Trowell’s apartment, thereby increasing the danger to (her).”
The officers spoke with Trowell outside
his apartment, for at least an hour, but he refused to let them in. At one point, they told the woman’s friend that they could only arrest Trowell if the man went to the police station and filed a complaint, which was false.
Trowell opened the curtain of his front window and came back outside, telling the officers they could see the woman sleeping on the couch. The officers tapped on the window and shouted to her but she did not respond.
Based on a timeline outlined in criminal court records, Trowell began raping the incapacitated woman within minutes of the officers leaving the scene.
The city never disclosed the results of its internal investigation.
The lawsuit, citing an internal affairs report, said the department had concluded that “due to the officer’s lack (of ) due diligence and assuming because the caller was intoxicated his concerns did not merit concern for the female, (the woman) was left in the apartment where she was later raped.” The officers received a counseling memo instructing them they should have consulted a supervisor.
A grand jury indictment later filed against Trowell indicated that at the time the woman was raped she was “mentally incapacitated due to the influence of alcohol.”
Trowell had a prior felony conviction for criminal contempt and was released from prison in 2014. He was arrested that month by city detectives and charged with felony weapons possession and menacing. He was later indicted on charges of first-degree rape, kidnapping and criminal possession of a weapon, all felonies.
Benjamin W. Hill, the woman’s attorney, declined to comment. Stephen J. Rehfuss, an attorney who handled the case for the city, also declined comment.