Louima Assailant Had Help, Prosecutor Says in Closing

The patrolman who confessed to torturing a Haitian immigrant in a police station bathroom “was the driving force” behind the attack, but he had help from four other officers, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

Federal prosecutor Alan Vinegrad reminded the jury during closing arguments in the four officers’ trial that patrolman Justin Volpe, who pleaded guilty midway through the trial, did not act alone.

“It’s hard to believe that something so depraved and so cruel could actually happen, let alone that it was two New York City police officers, in uniform, who did it,” Vinegrad said in his three-hour summation of nearly four weeks of testimony.

Volpe pleaded guilty to civil rights violations last month after fellow officers testified that he bragged about sodomizing Abner Louima with a broomstick because he mistakenly thought Louima had punched him outside a Brooklyn, N.Y., nightclub Aug. 9, 1997.

The brutality of the act shocked the city and raised tensions between police and minorities.

Officer Charles Schwarz, 33, is accused of holding Louima down during the attack. Schwarz, along with Thomas Wiese, 35, and Thomas Bruder, 33, is also accused of beating Louima in a patrol car. The officers’ supervisor, Sgt. Michael Bellomo, 37, is charged with covering up the incident.

Louima suffered severe internal injuries from the assault and underwent three operations. He has not worked since and has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the city.

Attorneys for Bruder and Wiese said in their closing arguments that their clients’ only mistake was working with Volpe.

The attorneys noted that Louima never identified Bruder or Wiese as being among his four assailants, and that his version of when and where he was beaten is inconsistent with that of prosecutors.

Bruder’s lawyer told jurors that his client was the only officer to help Louima, removing his handcuffs in his cell and retrieving his shoe after the bathroom assault. He reminded them that Bruder was in an unmarked car that night but that Louima said the officer who beat him came from a marked car.