Uber driver gets jail for gun-running
TWO NYPD detectives accused of making up a tall tale to justify an illegal search in a Manhattan gun possession case could face additional charges for telling a similar lie in a Queens drug case, the Daily News has learned
Detectives Kevin Desormeau and Sasha Cordoba, who were indicted on criminal charges Thursday in the Manhattan case, were sued by a Queens man who accused them of lying about seeing him peddle drugs.
That lawsuit cost the city a $547,500 settlement in November. Court filings indicate the Queens District attorney’s office is seeking to indict both detectives.
In a Jan. 19 letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon, the cops’ lawyer James Moschella said Queens prosecutors “indicated they have begun or are imminently beginning to present these matters to a grand jury.”
Sources said other cases in Queens involving the two detectives, who were assigned to the Queens South gang squad, are being reviewed.
The city’s Law Department walked away from the two detectives in August, forcing them to seek their own lawyers.
The plaintiff in the Queens case, Roosevelt McCoy, 47, was playing pool in Yogi’s restaurant on Guy R. Brewer Blvd. in Jamaica on Aug. 28, 2014, when the two detectives came in and ordered him outside, the lawsuit alleges.
They searched him, took him to a police precinct and stripsearched him, finding nothing either time.
Nevertheless, they told prosecutors they saw him dealing drugs, and claimed they found 7 grams of cocaine on him.
Desormeau repeated that allegation in a criminal complaint, in front of a grand jury and at a suppression hearing, but surveillance video shows he was lying, the lawsuit alleges. The video clearly showed he was not selling drugs, but playing pool the whole time, his lawyer Gabriel Harvis said.
The video also shows Cordoba THERE’S NO app for that.
A former Uber driver pleaded guilty Friday to picking up a man at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and driving him to Brownsville, Brooklyn, to sell guns. The passenger, Donovan Bryant — a North Carolina man who uses a wheelchair — brought the weapons from South Carolina to the city on Greyhound buses, authorities said.
Marlon Manswell, of Brooklyn, was fired from his gig at Uber in October 2015 when he was arrested, a spokeswoman for the ride-share app. Manswell, 32, pleaded guilty to gun sale, possession and conspiracy charges. He’ll get four years — and zero stars — in state prison when he’s sentenced next month.
The case against Bryant is still pending, authorities said. He’s accused of selling guns to undercover cops. The 50 or so guns included revolvers and semiautomatic weapons. Authorities said a gun trafficking ring got the weapons from Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina — part of the so-called “Iron Pipeline” where most of New York’s crime guns originate.
The attorney general’s organized crime task force worked with the NYPD gang squad Brooklyn North to build the case with undercovers, wiretaps and other surveillance.
“Gun trafficking rings like the one Marlon Manswell participated in fuel the gun violence that threatens New York families and law enforcement,” Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. AN AMTRAK police officer was charged with first-degree murder for shooting an unarmed man who was smoking marijuana in Chicago earlier this month, authorities said Friday.
Amtrak Officer LaRoyce Tankson, 31, shot 25-year-old Chad Robertson on Feb. 8 outside Chicago’s Union Station train terminal, police said.
Robertson was on his way home to Minneapolis from a Memphis wedding with two of his friends. The trio were waiting out an hourlong Megabus layover when Tankson and another officer asked them to leave.
Tankson and his partner later stopped Robertson to search him, but Robertson ran. Tankson fired a single gunshot, hitting Robertson in the shoulder. The father of two was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition and died Wednesday, about a week after he was shot.
Police told the Chicago Sun Times Robertson was carrying cash and drugs , but no weapon was found.