Officer Pleads Guilty in N.Y. Brutality Case

For a few minutes, the old bravado flickered on his face. Officer Justin Volpe was laughing Tuesday with his lawyers, just before he pleaded guilty to beating and torturing a Haitian immigrant with a broomstick in a Brooklyn police station.

But reality sunk in as Volpe approached the bench: He grew ashen-faced when reminded that he could get life in prison for one of the most sadistic acts of police violence ever to be tried in a U.S. courtroom. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he began to apologize--not to his victim, but to his own family.

“Hold it,” said U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson, cutting him off. “You can say all that at the sentencing hearing.”

Seconds later, Volpe, 27, the son of a retired detective, was whisked into custody, disappearing behind courtroom doors. Yet New Yorkers are not likely to forget him any time soon. Indeed, his case continues to be an agonizing, watershed moment for the nation’s largest police force as it wrestles with charges of brutality and racism.

Despite Volpe’s abrupt decision to throw himself on the mercy of the court, the trial of three officers and a sergeant who were charged in the August 1997 beating of Abner Louima resumes today, and the controversy is likely to heat up even more when the U.S. Civil Rights Commission holds what promises to be a contentious hearing this morning about police brutality in New York. Meanwhile, the city is gearing up for the trial of four officers charged with killing Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, in a hail of 41 bullets earlier this year.

The only relief for New Yorkers may be that they finally have definitive word on a crime that seemed unthinkable when news of it first broke. “In the bathroom of the precinct, I sodomized Mr. Abner Louima with a stick, then threatened to kill him if he told anybody,” Volpe told the court, outside the presence of the jury.

Asked if he hoped to intimidate his handcuffed victim, the beefy officer who had carried himself with a swagger when the trial began hung his head and said: “Yes.”

Volpe looked tense during the 45-minute court session, wiping his hand across his brow. Dressed in a dark blue suit, he grew increasingly somber as Nickerson read the seven charges against him and asked the officer if he understood them.

The judge pointedly had Volpe admit that he had violated Louima’s civil rights while the man was handcuffed.

At one point, Nickerson asked Volpe if other officers were present or involved during his attacks on Louima. Following a lengthy sidebar with attorneys, the policeman said he did not see anyone else hit Louima, but conceded that another officer “saw what was going on [in the bathroom] and did nothing to stop it.”

Once cocky about his chances, Volpe had been swiftly brought down by the testimony of five fellow officers, who had testified during the three-week-old trial that he boasted to them about brutalizing Louima; others recounted that he had bragged: “I broke a man down.” His lawyers told Nickerson Monday that he would enter his plea the next day.

Volpe’s statement sparked cheers from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who applauded the officers for their candor. The plea “is very encouraging for the image of the Police Department,” said Giuliani, “since it breaks down the blue wall of silence.”

Yet NYPD critics said Volpe is the tip of the iceberg and blasted him for not implicating the other officers charged with beating and torturing Louima following a fracas. “For us, this is only the beginning because other cops out there are guilty, and the streets of New York would be safer without them,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a political activist and an advisor to the Louima family.

Under a court agreement, none of Volpe’s testimony can be used as evidence against the other defendants. When the trial resumes, jurors will simply be told that the case of one officer has been disposed of, and attorneys for the remaining defendants insisted their clients had not been damaged.

“This case is nowhere near over,” said attorney Stephen Worth, who represents Officer Charles Schwarz, who is charged with holding Louima down in the bathroom while Volpe attacked him.

For Volpe, however, it’s the end of the line. Safir fired him immediately after he entered his plea; he was taken to a federal corrections center, where he will remain until his sentencing, within three months.

According to prosecutors, the Louima case began during a melee outside a Brooklyn nightclub. Volpe, one of several officers responding to the scene, was struck in the face, and mistakenly believed Louima, 32, had hit him. Enraged, he and other officers arrested the security guard, beat him while he was handcuffed in a patrol car and took him back to a police station, prosecutors said.

There, Louima was strip-searched before Volpe marched him into a bathroom and sodomized him with a broomstick. Louima is seeking $450 million in civil damages from the city.

He admitted during his testimony that he had made up several stories to embellish his accusations, most notably a charge that officers had shouted “It’s Giuliani time” as they tortured him. Defense attorneys attacked his credibility, but none more aggressively than Volpe’s lawyer, Marvyn Kornberg.

In his opening arguments, Kornberg suggested that Louima’s severe injuries--which required him to have a colostomy and be hospitalized for three months--may have been the result of consensual sex.

Asked why his client’s fortunes nose dived, the lawyer said, “there came a point when the evidence was overwhelming and it [was] in the best interest to take a plea.”

He noted that Volpe “is remorseful, he is upset,” and added that it was not necessary for the officer to apologize to Louima because “when you plead guilty, that’s a sufficient apology. The man is facing life in prison.”

Kornberg and others will eventually assemble character witnesses to convince Nickerson to show some leniency. Foremost among them may be Volpe’s father, John, a retired, highly regarded New York police detective who won national plaudits for exposing high-class art fraud rings.

During the trial, the father was a tireless advocate for his son, insisting the facts would prove him not guilty. On Tuesday, he looked stunned as he sat in the courtroom and watched his youngest son admit to an act of depravity.

The whole family seemed to be in denial. Soon after the 1997 attack, Justin Volpe proclaimed his innocence, telling Daily News columnist Mike McAlary--who has since died--that he had been framed; he suggested darkly that “a lot of stuff is going to come out” about Louima’s personal behavior in the nightclub. “Now I know what it’s like to be falsely accused,” Volpe said. “It will all come out.”

The lies ended Tuesday, and Sharpton issued a warning:

“A lot of people think we make up these stories [about brutality] to attract attention,” he told a crowd outside the courthouse. “Well, what do they say now--when they see this officer look a judge in the eye and tell him: ‘I did it’? “

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Researcher Lisa Meyer contributed to this story.