‘Violated’ by fellow Finest
Cop tells of foul goo in her water
After 15 years on the job, NYPD cop Yesenia Maida thought she had seen everything.
Then, a water bottle with what looked like semen was found on her desk in her Bronx precinct house.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Maida said in an exclusive interview with the Daily News. “You couldn’t make up that something like this happened.”
“I feel extremely violated and fear for my safety at the precinct,” Maida, 44, a youth officer at the 52nd Precinct in Norwood, explained. “I’m going into work, looking around and thinking, who could done have this to me?”
The clear plastic bottle with milky-white goo sat on Maida’s desk for at least two weeks before it was found on Nov. 30, she said.
Maida didn’t even make the disturbing discovery. One of her Youth Explorers — a 12year-old girl — was the first to spot the suspicious substance.
“She was helping me clean up the office when she saw the bottle and asked, ‘Is that ice?’ I knew what it looked like, but I didn’t know what to say. I told her, ‘I think its mold.’ ”
The married mother of two — whose husband works in the same precinct — reported it the next day and claims she almost immediately got pushback from the Internal Affairs Bureau, who she said declined to investigate at first.
Her bosses insinuated that her husband may have put the mysterious mucus in the bottle, and wanted to make sure that it was in the office the entire time.
“They’re telling me that someone ejaculates or puts some foreign substance in my water bottle at a police facility and nothing is going to get done about it?” she said. “I was very upset.”
After some pressure from Maida’s commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Thomas Alps at Internal Affairs launched an investigation and took the water bottle to be tested.
An NYPD spokesman said the entire matter is under investigation.
Maida said she had another bottle on her desk that wasn’t made of clear plastic. She took a swig from it before she tossed it out — and now she’s wondering if it was spiked.
“God forbid if it was… it’s going to be bad,” she said. “(Whoever did this) do not deserve to be called police officers and need to be out of this job and face consequences.”
“We have to change something in this department,” she said. “It’s not OK, but sexual harassment happens in this department every day. As women and as cops, we get tough skins and shrug it off, but it’s not going to happen this time.”
“Under (Commissioner James) O’Neill’s ethically challenged administration, anything goes,” her attorney Eric Sanders said. “At some point, the City Council must use its investigative powers to redress the seemingly endless problems related to sexual harassment within the department.”
Maida was floored that someone picked her as a target.
“I’ve never had an altercation with anyone...I’ve never rubbed anyone the wrong way and I’ve never given anyone the wrong idea about me,” she said. “You read about things like this in different parts of the world and never think that they will target you.”
As she mulls over legal action, over the weekend, Maida came clean to her “kids” — the 30 pre-teen and teenage Explorers she’s shepherding to become police officers.
She felt it was an important lesson for them, especially the young women.
“I wanted to tell them that I’m going to fight to make this right,” she said. “It’s never right when someone makes you feel violated.”