City pays out $20k in separate lawsuit against Brooklyn cop accused of 2017 rape

August 12, 2019 Noah Goldberg

Richard Hall (front) and Eddie Martins (back) leave Brooklyn Supreme Court Wednesday after Justice Danny Chun set a Sep. 9 court date for their trial. Eagle photo by Noah Goldberg.

Richard Hall (front) and Eddie Martins (back) leave Brooklyn Supreme Court in May. Eagle file photo by Noah Goldberg

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One of the Brooklyn cops accused of raping an 18-year-old girl in the back of a police car in 2017 after a traffic stop was also sued for the alleged unlawful arrest and assault of another woman just months earlier, according to a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court. The city settled the lawsuit for $20,000 in June.

Former cop Richard Hall and his partner Eddie Martins are set to go on trial in Brooklyn next month for the headline-grabbing September 2017 encounter they had with Anna Chambers.

Chambers — an alias the victim uses — claimed the two cops took turns raping her as they drove around southern Brooklyn with her in the back of the police van, after stopping her for having a small amount of marijuana in her car. They were originally charged with rape after Chambers reported the incident, but those charges were dropped in March due to Chambers’ “serious” credibility issues, according to a spokesperson for the Brooklyn district attorney.

They are now being charged with receiving sexual favors as a bribe and official misconduct in the case.

One of the two cops, Richard Hall, was also sued by a woman named Kathleen Toomer, who says that she was stopped in Prospect Lefferts Gardens by six cops in March 2017 for allegedly possessing marijuana — though she claimed she had none on her or in her car.

One of those cops — the only named officer in the suit — is Richard Hall.

“Ms. Toomer did not possess marijuana and no marijuana was recovered from her person or the car she was sitting in,” the lawsuit reads. It also alleges that Toomer was “assaulted by numerous officers,” though her lawyer, Ilissa Brownstein, said she did not “believe there was any physical misconduct.”

Brownstein said her client was not read her Miranda rights, and that there were “items … missing from her bag” after the arrest.

“The matter settled in June for $20,000. This settlement was in the best interest of all parties,” a spokesperson for the city’s Law Department told the Brooklyn Eagle.

Toomer, who was 59 at the time of the arrest, filed the suit in May 2018, months after Hall and Martins were accused of rape, but it wasn’t immediately clear if she knew about Chambers’ story. Her lawyer did not comment on whether Toomer knew about the rape allegations before filing her lawsuit.

Hall and Martins are also defendants in a federal lawsuit filed by Chambers — separate from the criminal charges against them — that alleges she was taken into custody in the officers’ van, raped and sexually assaulted. The lawsuit alleges that the officers drove around and continued to rape her before dropping her off near the 60th Precinct in Brooklyn without charging her with any crime.

At the time of the incident, it was not a crime for on-duty police officers to have sex with suspects in crimes. The law was changed in 2018; the statute now says that people in police custody cannot give consent.

Hall and Martins’ criminal trial is set for Sept. 9 in front of Judge Danny Chun in Brooklyn Supreme Court.