I was cop’s ‘sex slave’ He kept cash owed me, informant’s suit says
A confidential informant for the NYPD was sexually abused by the detective she worked for, according to a new lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
The Staten Island cop also kept some of the money he paid her out of the department’s Crime Stoppers fund for anonymous tips, the suit alleges.
Takisha Reid, 46, says she became an NYPD informant in 2017, with Detective Gregory Howard using her to help identify alleged criminals in the five boroughs. Soon after she started working for Howard, he began hitting on her, the mother of one told the Daily News.
“Right away he was making moves on me,” Reid (photo) said. “I told him I didn’t see him in that way and I wanted to keep it professional.”
But Howard did not take no for an answer, according to the lawsuit.
Starting in April 2018, Howard sexually abused Reid numerous times, including in his car, according to the suit. He would make Reid go out to dinner with him and then would sexually assault and rape her, according to the suit.
Afterward, he would threaten Reid if she exposed him, she claims.
“He said, ‘How would you like it if I told the people that you gave me, that it was you that gave them up?’ ” Reid recalled the detective saying.
“I felt betrayed and right then and there I felt like he was not a good cop,” Reid told The News. “I felt afraid because he knew that I did not want it to get out that I was an informant.”
Howard, who worked out of the 120th Precinct on Staten
Island, would pay Reid money from the Crime Stoppers fund for her work as an informant, but would also keep some of the cash for himself, according to the lawsuit.
The abuse went on until January 2019, according to the suit. Reid says she informed the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau of the assault after the first incident in April 2018.
Howard told Reid not to speak with the IAB or the
Civilian Complaint Review Board, according to the lawsuit, though Reid eventually filed reports with both.
The suit also claims that at a certain point Howard ceased to use Reid as an informant but continued to “use her as his sexual slave under threats of violence and exposure.”
“The IAB did substantiate the allegations that she filed against the officer. But not surprisingly, he’s still on the payroll,” said Reid’s lawyer Vik Pawar. “It was never consensual. He always made a point to say he would expose her as a confidential informant.”
“We will review the lawsuit if and when we are served,” said a spokeswoman for the NYPD.
The NYPD did not comment on the outcome of any IAB investigation into Howard.