SUIT TIES UP ROB RAP
Internal NYPD harass claim snarls shoplift case vs. sergeant
An NYPD analyst’s harassment lawsuit against her bosses at the Queens crime lab is complicating a departmental disciplinary case, the Daily News has learned.
Criminalist Grace Warmbier’s suit caused a sudden reshuffling of witnesses at the internal agency trial of a sergeant who was arrested for shoplifting, sources with knowledge of the case said.
Warmbier alleges in her Queens Supreme Court lawsuit that her superiors at the questioned documents unit in Jamaica bullied her and have retaliated against her since September 2019.
The analyst claims she was passed over for a promotion and was given extra work to do because she complained about her colleagues. Warmbier had to go into the office at the height of the pandemic, even though her co-workers were allowed to work at home, her May suit states.
She also cites ongoing workplace tension with a supervisor, criminalist Aurora Dumitra, whom she accuses of pressing her to change her findings in a departmental case, according to her legal papers.
NYPD prosecutors asked Dumitra to look over signatures on two Macy’s documents in a shoplifting case against Sgt. Eva Pena.
Pena was arrested in the theft of $359 worth of Guess and Tommy Hilfiger clothes from a Macy’s in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers in 2019. She denies the theft and says she didn’t sign Macy’s documents admitting guilt.
Warmbier reviewed Dumitra’s work on the Pena case in January, but didn’t come to the same conclusion, Warmbier’s lawyer, Maxwell Glass said. Dumitra wanted her subordinate to change her “possible” signature match to a definitive match.
“She’s being pressured to change the conclusion of her work. Ultimately she didn’t change the conclusion,” Glass said. “It’s an allegation of what would be probably unethical and potentially borderline illegal in terms of evidence or tampering with evidence. But at the end of the day my client didn’t change the report.”
The NYPD Department Advocate’s office was going to ask Dumitra to testify about handwriting analysis in Pena’s departmental trial, but pulled her from the witness list when the clash over her findings was highlighted in the lawsuit, sources said.
Pena, a mother of three, claims the department store’s asset protection staff framed her, tried to shake her down and forged her signature on the paperwork.
“They never gave me anything to sign. Nothing,” Pena told The News.
“They said, ‘We’re going to count how many items there are and multiply it by five. You pay us that amount, we’ll open up the door and go home, no one would ever find out. I said ‘Do yourself a favor and call the cops,’ ” Pena said.
Pena claims she didn’t identify herself as a police officer until Westchester cops arrived and charged her with petty larceny.
“She had about $1,000 in her wallet and a Macy’s credit card, so why would she steal something? It makes zero sense,” Pena’s lawyer Eric Sanders said at the start of her departmental trial on July 6.
A Macy’s security guard testified that she followed Pena into the ladies’ room and found clothing tags floating inside a toilet bowl after Pena walked out. She denied setting Pena up, didn’t see her rip the tags off clothes and said she saw Pena sign the store documents, even though it was not caught on camera.
Pena, an NYPD housing sergeant, was suspended without pay after her arrest. She’s been stripped of her gun and shield and is assigned to Fleet Services in Queens. The NYPD’s Department Advocate’s office wants to fire Pena for shoplifting and lying to her bosses.
The city has not responded to Warmbier’s lawsuit, and the NYPD declined to comment. Macy’s did not return a request for comment about the allegations against their employee.
Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci said, “The case is currently under review. We will respond in the litigation.”
Pena’s criminal trial in Westchester will start on Aug. 23.
No handwriting analysis has been presented at her NYPD trial, which came as no surprise to Glass.
“The NYPD crime lab is run like a circus in general,” Glass said. “[The Pena case] is just a small subset of the bigger circus.”