State Police sgt. accused in Las Vegas rape

Messages on the woman’s phone show the two had talked for some months

A New Mexico State Police sergeant is accused of raping a woman last weekend at his home in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

Kevin Keiner, 31, is charged with criminal sexual penetration and has been placed on administrative leave as the agency investigates the allegations.

A warrant was issued Wednesday for Keiner’s arrest.

Ray Wilson, a State Police spokesman, said Keiner has been with the agency for seven years.

“Officers are held to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism, and any act of misconduct by an officer erodes the confidence that the public has placed in us,” State Police Chief Tim Johnson said in a statement, adding his agency will cooperate fully in the investigation.

Johnson added, “My officers work hard to establish trust in our communities and we will not allow the actions of one officer to undermine our efforts.”

The Las Vegas Police Department is investigating the alleged rape.

On Sunday, a detective met with a woman at the hospital after she reported being raped by Keiner, according to a arrest warrant affidavit filed in Magistrate Court. The woman told police she called Keiner so she could file a police report after a drunken fight with her brother.

Police said the woman told them she has known Keiner “as a friend” for five years, but there had never been anything sexual between them. She said Keiner had insisted they become more than friends.

The woman told a detective Keiner picked her up in his police unit and, instead of taking her to file a report, brought her to his house, according to the affidavit. She said that, once there, he told her to take a shower and got in with her.

Police said the woman told them she blacked out and woke up to Keiner raping her, and, afterward, he tried to keep her from leaving the house. She provided a recording to police where she can be heard accusing Keiner of rape and asking him to let her leave.

Keiner told police the woman asked him to join her in the shower and she “nodded her head in a ‘yes’ motion” before they had sex, according to the affidavit. Keiner said the woman never blacked out and accused him of rape.

Police said Keiner told them he and the woman had been intimate “in the past” and sent nude videos to each other, according to the affidavit. Police searched the woman’s phone and found messages between the two going back months.

Police said the messages showed the woman canceled plans with Keiner “quite frequently” and only “seldom talks about kissing and hugging,” with no explicit videos exchanged.

In a follow-up interview, the woman told police “the uniform scares the (expletive) out of me now,” according to the affidavit. After being told Keiner said she was “just buzzed,” the woman said she was drunk enough to be throwing up at his house.

Police said several people who saw the woman before the incident told police she was drunk enough to have trouble walking. A man who picked her up after she left Keiner’s home on foot said she was “still intoxicated” and “emotional from the events that just took place.”

The man told police that, after he picked the woman up, a State Police vehicle came down the same road with its spotlight on “possibly looking for (the woman),” according to the complaint. The man said he was not sure who was in the police vehicle, but “it looked like (Keiner’s) unit.”