Office of legal ‘affairs’
Bx. DA office rife with sex, booze: worker
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office is a hotbed of misconduct where prosecutors and other staffers neglect their work to booze it up and have sex, according to a $15 million notice of claim filed Monday by a suspended employee who’s romantically involved with an embattled NYPD cop.
Crime analyst Crystal Rivera (right) also claims Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark opened a baseless probe into her boyfriend, Detective David Terrell, to “publicly vilify” him and cover up her office’s “incompetence and unethical practices.”
Rivera’s wide-ranging allegations were made in a filing with the city Comptroller’s Office that is required before suing the city.
The papers say Clark and several top aides illegally retaliated against Rivera Friday by slapping her with administrative charges, including insubordination, based on her “personal relationship” with Terrell.
Terrell worked on the case of a Bronx teen charged in a 2015 shooting who claimed he was framed. After the prosecution fell apart, Clark launched an investigation intoo the matter and the feds joined in.
During an afternoon news conference outside the DA’s Office, Rivera claimed she had witnessed an astounding array of scandalous behavior since she was hired there in 2007. “People are having sex in the office,” she said while discussing her official claim. “We used to have parties . . . where ADAs will have sexual relationships with officers and prosecutors. We’ve had incidents where ADAs are having ssex with each other and they’re married, so husbands find out about their affair and they come to the office and expose [it]. “We had a brawl, basically a full-out fight, in front of the office,” she alleged. Rivera also alleged that prosecutors keep booze in personal refrigerators in ttheir offices.
“They would drink this on the job and still be on call in the courtroom,” she said.
Rivera’s lawyer, ex-cop Eric Sanders, accused Clark of playing “political games” by bringing administrative charges against Rivera.
“We’re here to expose the district attorney for what she is [doing], corrupting this office,” he said.
Last year, Terrell filed his own, $175 million notice of claim against the city, claiming it has encouraged a “cottage industry” of bogus suits against cops by settling allegations of false arrests and police brutality.
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Rivera’s allegations and referred questions to the city Law Department, which said only that it would review the notice of claim.