NYPD detectives suspended amid sex assault probe

NEW YORK (AP) - Two New York City police detectives have been placed on desk duty while the department investigates an 18-year-old woman's accusation that she was handcuffed, put into their unmarked police van and sexually assaulted.

The Brooklyn teenager said the attack happened after the detectives detained her following a traffic stop with two friends on Sept. 15, according to her lawyer, Michael David.

She said the detectives threatened her with arrest over a bottle of prescription pills, then handcuffed her and drove around before stopping in a restaurant parking lot. One detective forced her to perform oral sex and the other raped her, David said.

"They basically kidnapped her, raped her and then threw her out on the street," David said.

He said the officers dropped her off not far from a station house. A friend then accompanied the woman to a hospital.

A police spokesman said the two detectives plus their supervisor were stripped of their guns and badges. The Brooklyn District Attorney's office also is investigating.

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, said he is withholding comment.

"There isn't much I can say until the investigation is completed," he said.

The Associated Press generally doesn't identify people who say they were sexually assaulted without their consent.

After the New York Post wrote about the allegations, the woman tweeted a link to the story.

"SHARE THIS, yes its about me," she wrote, adding "Justice needs to be served" in a tweet to a Post reporter.

Both tweets were later deleted and the woman's account was later made private.

"She felt like she had to say something," David said of the deleted tweet.

The head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, Ed Mullins, told the Daily News it was "lunacy" that the detectives' supervisor had also been placed on modified duty because he was involved in another arrest at a different location when the encounter with the teen happened.