A judge recommended two NYPD officers be fired after finding them guilty of raping a minor female.
Officers Sanad Musallam and Yaser Shohatee allegedly “targeted” the 15-year-old girl. At the time, she was part of the NYPD’s Explorers, a police youth program.
The cops’ exhibited “shocking professional and sexual misconduct,” wrote Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Trials Paul Gamble in his ruling.
Shohatee, now 41, exchanged a total of 857 text messages with the teen. He asked for photos from the girl on Snapchat and invited her to his apartment at least twice, sometime between November 2015 and May 2016.
The former officer denied any wrongdoing but admitted to having the girl at his home. He told investigators that he didn’t see anything wrong with having her over.
“The insidious and sinister nature of [Shohatee’s] repeated actions would cause any responsible adult, let alone a parent, to recoil in horror,’’ the judge wrote. He ruled the two had sex at least twice.
Musallam, now 34, also denied having an inappropriate relationship with the minor. He maintains that the girl’s behavior toward him was problematic. Musallam initially responded to a 911 call made by the teen’s mother after she had gone missing.
He then exchanged 742 texts with her from July 2015 and December 2016. One of those messages contained an inappropriate photo, which he did not report.
“I find that its incriminating nature should have been immediately apparent to any reasonable adult, let alone a police officer,” Gamble wrote.
The teen told investigators that Musallam asked her to perform oral sex on him while they were alone in his car. She said she refused, but he asked for “a hand job,” which she says she performed. Musallam denies any sexual contact with her.
According to the Brooklyn District Attorney, the allegations of abuse surfaced during an investigation into whether the minor had been trafficked.
Both officers remained on the force with full pay until their dismissal on March 25. Neither cop was ever criminally charged in the case. The teen stopped cooperating with investigators, according to a spokesman for the DA’s office.
“We applaud the fact that it is as a result of an internal NYPD disciplinary trial that these individuals are no longer members of this Police Department,” a police spokesman said to the New York Post.
