New York Officer Is Accused of Exposing Himself to Female Colleagues

NEW YORK — A New York City police officer was charged Friday with public lewdness and exposing himself to five female officers while he was on duty.

According to an indictment announced by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, the officer, Anthony Avosso, 31, exposed himself on three occasions to one of the female officers between September and last month while they were alone in an office at the 60th Precinct station house in Coney Island, where both were assigned to a plainclothes unit.

On Feb. 15, during the most recent encounter, the female officer, called Avosso “a pervert,” prosecutors said. The next day, she filed a complaint with her union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, prompting an investigation by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

Prosecutors said the inquiry revealed that Avosso, a 10-year veteran of the force, had exposed himself to four other female officers at the station house, most of whom were his subordinates. Prosecutors said his conduct had created a treacherous work environment in what was already a predominantly male workplace.

In one incident, prosecutors said, Avosso showed his genitals to a probationary female officer, who was just out of the Police Academy, while asking her about her goals in the department. In another, over the summer, he did the same to a female officer on the F train as the two were riding from the district attorney’s office in downtown Brooklyn back to the 60th Precinct station house.

Avosso has also been charged with masturbating in front of a fourth female officer in a police squad car during an overnight tour in October.

In an encounter with a fifth female officer in November, Avosso was accused of exposing himself while the two were in the back seat of a police car after stopping for lunch at Wendy’s on their way back to the station house from the Brooklyn courthouse. Other officers were sitting in the front seats, prosecutors said.

“There is no place for this defendant’s alleged outrageous behavior anywhere in our society and especially within our Police Department,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney said in a statement issued Friday.” Gonzalez commended Internal Affairs and his own prosecutors “for taking swift action to investigate and prosecute these disturbing allegations.”

At an arraignment Friday in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Avosso pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on his own recognizance. His lawyer, Richard Murray, said the officer is married and has three children.

Avosso has been suspended pending the disposition of his case.