Dominatrix Sues Greenburgh Police Over Harassment

[WaTcHeR]

04/21/2006 - The dominatrix who accused Greenburgh police officers of sexual harassment following her arrest on drug charges now plans to slap the department with a $2 million federal lawsuit.

"This has been a nightmare for me, my family and all concerned,'' Manhattanville College student Gina Pane said in announcing that she has filed a notice of claim against the town of Greenburgh and its Police Department in U.S. District Court. "Not all police officers are bad, and I continue to respect the police, but what happened to me was wrong.''

Pane, 31, was arrested Jan. 21 in the parking lot of a Greenburgh movie theater on charges of marijuana possession and driving while ability impaired by drugs. She told authorities that after police found sex toys in her car they taunted her at police headquarters and made lewd comments.

The following day, she claims, she engaged in sexual acts with Officer Eric Ward after he told her he could make the charges go away.

Until shortly after her arrest, Pane advertised herself as "angelabella" on a Web site where she offered her services for a variety of sadomasochistic fetishes.

Pane's complaint prompted a seven-week investigation by the Police Department and the Westchester District Attorney's Office and resulted in Ward's arrest in March on an official misconduct charge.

The DWAI charge against Pane has been dropped, but the Rye Brook resident is due in Town Court on May 23 to face the marijuana charge.

Ravi Batra, Pane's lawyer in the civil case, praised the District Attorney's Office and Greenburgh Police Chief John Kapica for responding quickly to Pane's allegations "and taking this matter very seriously.''

Batra said the notice "represents an opportunity for society to make systematic changes,'' adding that his client was subjected to "locker room, animal-house-type behavior'' at police headquarters.

"Every human being who comes in contact with the police, whether innocent or guilty, is entitled to be treated with a certain level of respect,'' he said.

Kapica said he has not seen the notice of claim and declined to comment.

In the court papers filed yesterday, Pane says that while she was in custody, several officers took photos of her and made lewd remarks.

One officer is accused of asking her to spank him, which she did, according to the papers. The claim notice says that Ward called her Jan. 22, picked her up in his Jeep, took her to the woods and "with DNA evidence of his sexual gratification left behind in the woods ... dropped off Gina.''

The claim says Pane has received medical attention, including emergency room treatment and prescriptions for anti-depressant medications as a result of the misconduct. "I had a panic attack the first day I went back to school,'' she said. "I'm afraid to go to sleep. Prescriptions don't stop nightmares.''

Batra said that 25 percent of any punitive damages Pane received would be donated to the Michael Frey Foundation set up in memory of the Eastchester police officer killed in 1996. The remaining 75 percent, he said, will be distributed to the widows and orphans funds of every local Police Benevolent Association in Westchester.

The town has 90 days to respond to the notice of claim

[WaTcHeR]

11.28.2006 - GREENBURGH - Evidence recovered from a Connecticut nature preserve could not prove that a dominatrix engaged in a kinky sex act with a Greenburgh police officer as she contends, a Westchester forensic scientist testified yesterday at the officer's criminal trial.

Erik Ward, 32, is charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor, accused of suggesting that he could help get a criminal charge against Gina Pane dismissed if she would entertain his coprophilia fetish.

Pane testified last week that she met with Ward on Jan. 22, a day after she was arrested on marijuana charges. She said she accompanied him into a wooded area in Greenwich, Conn., and squatted on a branch and defecated as he masturbated.

She filed a complaint with police days later, alleging those actions by Ward and claiming that other officers sexually harassed her while processing her arrest. Police then collected fecal matter and twigs and leaves from where Pane said the two met.

Susan Flaherty of the Westchester County forensics lab testified that she found no evidence of semen on any of the leaves and twigs brought to her. The feces were later tested at a Pennsylvania laboratory, which could not establish whether they were human.

On questioning by Assistant District Attorney Gwendolyn Galef, Flaherty said that semen generally does not last beyond three days and that rain, snow and the bacteria in the feces could have broken it down.

Ward's lawyer, Andrew Quinn, has argued that the officer was only trying to cultivate Pane as a police informant and did nothing inappropriate, sexual or otherwise, when he met with her. The meeting was to arrange for her to set up a man she knew as a cocaine dealer, Quinn has said.

Two police captains, Joseph DeCarlo and Joseph Delio, testified yesterday that if Ward was trying to establish an informant, he should have informed a supervisor beforehand and should have brought along another officer because Pane was a woman. Galef introduced evidence that Ward knew the rules because he had followed them in previous cases when he registered informants with the department.

But Quinn suggested that those rules apply to official confidential informants, not to the initial meetings when potential informants are recruited.

He called as a witness retired Sgt. Richard Conroy, Ward's former supervisor in the street crime unit, who testified that he was away that weekend and that Ward told him about the meeting the first opportunity he had when Conroy returned.

Conroy said it was important to meet with possible informants as soon after an arrest as possible and there was nothing unusual about the meeting Ward described to him. He said, however, that Ward should have brought along another officer once he knew Pane was a dominatrix.

Conroy and DeCarlo both testified that Ward was an excellent, hardworking officer. DeCarlo said Ward had received several awards for his police work, including some for distinguished service.

For Town Judge Doris Friedman to convict Ward, she would have to find that he sought to obtain a benefit from Pane through police work that he knew was unauthorized.

Pane did not attend the trial yesterday, but her lawyers, Tony Castro and Ravi Batra, were there. They are planning a $2 million lawsuit for Pane against the town.

Ward, who is suspended without pay pending the outcome of the case, is expected to testify Monday when the nonjury trial before Friedman resumes. He is also facing departmental charges, and his hearing on those charges begins tonight at Town Hall.

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[WaTcHeR]

11.30.2006 - GREENBURGH - A suspended Greenburgh police officer said he met a dominatrix to recruit her as an informant but never engaged in any sexual or kinky activities with her.

Erik Ward's first public account of his dealings with dominatrix Gina Pane came at a disciplinary hearing last night before members of the Greenburgh Town Board, who are serving as the Board of Police Commissioners. The board will consider departmental charges filed against Ward by Chief John Kapica, and if it finds the officer guilty, he could be further suspended or fired.

Pane was arrested Jan. 21 on marijuana and driving-while-ability-impaired charges after, police said, she was smoking marijuana in the parking lot of the Greenburgh Multiplex on Saw Mill River Road. She said that police officers harassed her later at headquarters after learning she was a dominatrix and that Ward arranged to meet her the following day under the guise of trying to recruit her to become an informant.

Pane said he suggested he could help get her charges dismissed if she would act out a fetish of his. Pane said they went into a Greenwich, Conn., nature preserve, where she defecated as he masturbated.

But Ward insisted last night that his behavior was appropriate for the recruitment of an informant. On questioning by prosecutor Vincent Toomey, Ward said there was no discussion of Pane's occupation or sexual activity in the initial conversations they had at the theater parking lot, at police headquarters or over the phone setting up the meeting. He said he never talked with her about his sexual preferences, as she contends.

Ward said they met the following afternoon, even though it was his day off, because he wanted to talk to her, before an attorney or her family talked her out of becoming an informant, about a drug dealer she claimed she could set up.

The officer said they sat in his car in the parking lot of the Arrowwood conference center near her Rye Brook home. He had her call a cocaine dealer she knew because he hoped she would set up a drug buy in Greenburgh.

The only conversation of a sexual nature was when she would describe fetishes her clients enjoyed. He said he didn't know if she was teasing him or just entertaining herself, but that he didn't try to stop her.

"Sometimes when you have an informant who wants to talk, you let them talk," he said.

They were waiting for the drug dealer to call back when both began feeling uneasy in the parking lot, he said. They drove around and eventually ended up in the woods, he said, but he told her he wanted to leave because it was too secluded.

At that point in the testimony, the hearing was adjourned. It will resume at 7 tonight.

Ward insisted he never told Pane he could get her charges dismissed. The only thing he promised her, he said, was that if her information led to an arrest, he would notify prosecutors of her cooperation so they could consider reducing the charges against her.

Toomey suggested that Ward's violations of departmental procedures in meeting with Pane the way he did warranted his dismissal from the force because they put the town and its Police Department in an "indefensible" position against her claims.

Ward said he took into account her profession but that it didn't dissuade him from meeting with her or excite him.

"We've locked up some very strange people. A dominatrix is like a prostitute to me. We've locked up many prostitutes," he said. "A dominatrix didn't really move me at all."

Ward was suspended with pay from his $81,954-a-year job and his street-crime unit temporarily disbanded after Pane filed a formal complaint with police officials that week.

The six-year veteran was eventually arrested on a charge of official misconduct, a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in the county jail. After his arrest, Ward's suspension became without pay. His nonjury trial in that case resumes Monday.

Neither Pane nor her lawyers attended last night's hearing. She is still fighting a misdemeanor marijuana charge, and her lawyers have announced plans to sue the town for $2 million.

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[KC]

GREENBURGH - The police officer accused of having a tryst in the woods with a dominatrix was ordered fired by the Town of Greenburgh's Board of Police Commissioners in a decision released after business hours today.

Erik Ward, who was acquitted of the criminal charge of official misconduct in Town Court in December, was found guilty today of three out of seven departmental charges stemming from his interaction with Gina Pane, a professional dominatrix who was arrested on a marijuana possession charge in January 2006.

The day after her arrest, Ward met Pane at the parking lot of the Doral Arrowwood Resort and Country Club, drove off for about 20 minutes then returned and dropped her off. Ward maintains that he was trying to develop Pane as a confidential informant in order to arrest her marijuana supplier. Pane testified that she and Ward drove off to a secluded spot and that he masturbated while she squatted on a tree branch and defecated to satisfy his sexual fetish.

Ward was found guilty of failing to comply with departmental procedures governing confidential informants, failing to properly report his contact with Pane to his superior officer and conduct which brings discredit upon the department.

Ward, who joined the Police Department in May 2000, has been suspended from his $81,954 per year job since February.


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