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Lawmaker’s suit: We won’t take it lying down!
A SEX-DEPRIVED Queens assemblywoman is suing the state for firing her court officer hubby, saying that since he was canned, the two of them stopped getting busy.
Assemblywoman Michele Titus and her husband, Eric DeBerry, filed the lawsuit last month, accusing the New York State Unified Court System — which employs court officers — of wrongful termination and discriminating against black workers.
The lawmaker, a Democrat, said in a summons connected to the lawsuit that she and DeBerry quit making whoopee after he lost his job and the two grew apart.
“Mr. DeBerry was always agitated, he was short-tempered and always defensive,” Titus, 47, said in papers filed in Queens Supreme Court on Aug. 8. “I had to separate myself from Mr. DeBerry, and we stopped engaging in coitus.”
She said that the two became estranged because “after dealing with the stress at work, my husband was not pleasant to live with.”
DeBerry, who worked as a court officer for 16 years, said he was fired in August 2014 after the court system put him on probation for allegedly telling a civilian, “Shut the f--k up and mind your business.”
DeBerry, 49, said he never cursed at the person. And he said white court officers have gotten passes for doing far worse.
DeBerry, who is black, said that he knows of white court officers who were arrested for stalking, buying cocaine from an undercover cop, drunken driving and waving a gun at civilians while boozed up.
The summons only names some of the officers who were allegedly arrested. However, it doesn’t provide the adjudication of those cases — or if those officers were placed on probation.
For example, Christopher Ofee, the officer DeBerry names in the stalking incident, was found not guilty at a trial in 2009.
A source said that in some instances, court officers can choose between fighting the allegations in a departmental trial or accepting probation. If probation is accepted, the officer waives the right to a trial.
DeBerry worked at Queens Criminal Court before he was terminated.
He said that he was transferred to Queens in 2003, but was frequently moved to different posts in the courthouse. His supervisors “constantly accused me of being in Queens based on nepotism,” he said in the summons.
He also claims that the court system hired decoys to wait on the lines where he was posted to a metal detector “in an effort to incite my passions.”
Titus, who is a lawyer, won her Assembly seat during a special election in 2002. Her district includes Far Rockaway, South Ozone Park, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale and Laurelton.
She and her husband declined to comment on their dry spell through their lawyer Audrey Thomas.
However, in the summons, Titus said she and DeBerry “are working out our issues.”
A spokesman for the Office of Court Administration declined to comment on the allegations because of pending litigation.