Thrives in Fla. after ’97 horror as cop rots
TWENTY YEARS ago, a furious white cop sodomized a Haitian immigrant with a stick in Brooklyn — setting off one of the biggest police misconduct investigations in city history.
The vicious attack on Abner Louima on Aug. 9, 1997, became worldwide news, sparked a profound discussion about policing and race, and cost the city nearly $10 million to settle a lawsuit.
Two decades later, Louima, 50, is living a quiet but productive life in Miami, while the officer who attacked him, Justin Volpe, has eight years left on his federal prison sentence.
In a photo taken two weeks ago on a boat on Miami Beach, Louima looks rested and happy in designer jeans ripped for effect and a casual blue-andwhite, short-sleeved shirt. He has a salt-and-pepper beard and has gained a few pounds over the years.
He runs a real estate business and lives in a swanky mansion with a pool in Miami Lakes. He declined to speak with a reporter Tuesday.
“He has put this behind him and gone on with his life,” his lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said. “He’s concentrating on taking care of his family. He advises other victims that they should move on with their lives and live their lives.”
The sequence of events that led to the bone-chilling assault began outside Club Rendezvous on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn. Cops went to the club to deal with a disturbance. While there, Officer Justin Volpe was hit and knocked down.
Volpe mistakenly thought it was Louima who had punched him. The immigrant from Haiti was arrested on disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges.
Volpe later admitted to punching Louima in the police car on the way to the 70th Precinct stationhouse.
He then took Louima into a bathroom at the stationhouse and sodomized him by jamming a stick in his rectum.
“I was mad at the time,” he said when he pleaded guilty in 1999 in the middle of his trial in Brooklyn Federal Court, admitting he wanted to humiliate and intimidate Louima.
“I told him, ‘If you tell anybody about this, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.’ ”
Louima suffered cuts to his intestines and had to undergo multiple surgeries.
Officer Charles Schwarz was charged with holding Louima down, and Officers Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese were accused of hitting Louima in the patrol car.
The city settled the case in 2001 for $8.75 million. Schwarz got five years for lying about his actions. Bruder and Wiese were convicted of conspiracy, but their sentences were overturned. Volpe got a 30-year prison sentence.
Louima’s cousin Samuel Nicolas, 59, called the case “lifealtering.”
“I think the overall police relationships have improved somewhat, but there are some aspects that seem to be reverting,” said Nicolas, now pastor at Evangelical Crusade Christian Church in East Flatbush.
“The case shed a light on brutality. I don’t think the nation and the world understood the extent of police brutality at the time. With cell phones and security cameras, we’re not living in the same day and age where people can do whatever they want.”
The years have been tough on Grace Volpe, Volpe’s mom. Her husband, Robert Volpe, who had a distinguished career as a detective, died 11 years ago.
The earliest date that Volpe — inmate No. 49477-053 — can be released is Aug. 3, 2025.
She told the Daily News she visits her son often at Butner Federal Correctional Institution, the prison in North Carolina where he is housed. He got married behind bars to fellow Staten Islander Caroline DeMaso in 2012.
“I don’t wish this situation on a living soul,” she said. “He keeps his head up. Bitterness isn’t going to get us, anyway. We wish no ill to anyone. We put it completely in God’s hands.”
She said her son tries to help other inmates, including a man dying of cancer. He convinced prison officials to let the man go to a hospital, she said.
“There are so many people he has helped, you would be on the phone with me for an hour,” she said.
Marvyn Kornberg, Volpe’s trial lawyer, said the sentence was too severe.
“Guys commit murders and they don’t get that amount of time,” he said. “It shows exactly what the media can do in cases which they find creates a good story for them.”
Rubenstein said especially in the Trump era, exposing such cases is key.
“We must continue to shine a spotlight on wrongdoing by police whenever and wherever it occurs,” he said.
After 20 years, the city is far different from what it was then. The number of major crimes has fallen, and the Police Department has embraced a strategy of community engagement and rejected the stopand-frisk strategy that a judge ruled violated the civil rights of many blacks and Hispanics.
“The Abner Louima case was certainly something that helped galvanize this important evolution,” mayoral spokesman Austin Finan said.