BROOKLYN — A Crown Heights NYPD detective charged with public masturbation in Long Island has insisted he is innocent and says police made him give a false confession, his attorney said Tuesday.
Robert Francis has been suspended from his job in the 71st Precinct after his March 25 arrest in Rockville Centre on public lewdness and trespassing charges after police said he confessed to masturbating in the town on four separate occasions.
But at his arraignment Monday, Francis pled not guilty to the crimes, court records show. His attorney Peter Brill says he believes his client is an innocent victim who was targeted by police under pressure to make an arrest in the Nassau County town.
“In what is a small and generally upper class community, you have a series of disturbing allegations,” Brill told DNAinfo on Tuesday. “There’s clearly a great deal of pressure to clear the books. And they found, in my opinion, a convenient way to do that.”
Brill claims police said three victims in the case originally identified the perpetrator as white, but Francis, who is black, was ultimately arrested after signing a false confession after “hours and hours” in police custody.
“We have a dark-skinned African-American male in a vast majority white community, lawfully present for an innocent reason in that community … and yet they arrest him and charge him with these incidents,” he said.
In a report by Newsday, Rockville Centre’s police commissioner Charles Gennario said he is confident “we have the right guy,” adding the town has had no reports of similar crimes since Francis was arrested.
“I can assure you that he was not coerced into giving us that confession,” he told the Long Island newspaper.
Francis, who resides in Queens, has been suspended without pay since the March 25 arrest, the NYPD said. He was released without bail with an order of protection after his hearing Monday and is due back in court on May 17, court records show.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Rockville Centre is located in Suffolk County. It is located in Nassau County.
