Former 68th Precinct cops fired after statutory rape verdict

August 6, 2021 Jaime DeJesus

Former 68th Precinct police officer Yaser Shohatee was fired after an internal trial found him guilty of statutory rape.

Share this:

Two former police officers of the 68th Precinct were fired in March after Paul Gamble, assistant deputy commissioner trials at the NYPD, found them guilty of the alleged statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl starting in 2015.

Last week, the New York Post reported the 41-page ruling which claimed that ex-officers Yaser Shohatee, 41, and Sanad Musallam, 34, allegedly had sex with the underage girl and that dozens of phone calls were made and hundreds of text messages sent, including explicit photos, between 2015 and 2016.

The girl was part of the Explorers program.

“Both [officers] have been found guilty of shocking professional and sexual misconduct,” Gamble said. “The evidence supports a finding that [the officers] individually targeted the minor as a particularly vulnerable individual they were morally obliged to protect but chose to take advantage of to satisfy their depraved interests.”

However, Shohatee and Musallam weren’t criminally charged, as the New York Times reported that the girl stopped cooperating with the investigation.

The documents revealed Shohatee allegedly solicited photos from the girl via social media and asked her if she “would be down to have sex” in early 2016.

The ruling stated that he had the girl over to his apartment late at night at least twice between 2015 and 2016. They also met once in his car.

Shohatee admitted that she was alone with him in his apartment but said there was no sexual interaction involved and the visits were initiated by her.

“The insidious and sinister nature of [Shohatee’s] repeated actions would cause any responsible adult, let alone a parent, to recoil in horror,’’ Gamble wrote.

Gamble ruled that the two had sex at least twice.

Documents claim Musallam and the girl were alone in his car while he was off-duty. She told investigators that he asked her to perform oral sex upon him and she refused. The records said he then asked her if she would give him a hand job, which she did.

The New York Times added that Musallam met the girl after her mother called 911 to report her missing. The mother told investigators she asked him to help her daughter, who struggled with substance abuse.

Musallam denied the girl’s accusations and said they talked in the car for a few minutes with her mother close by.

Following Gamble’s recommendation in March, the two officers were fired weeks later.

The documents cover the precinct the officers were stationed in during the time of the alleged crimes.

“There is zero tolerance in the NYPD for corruption of any kind and these two former officers forfeited their privilege to be part of our proud Police Department by disgracefully violating their oaths of office and the public trust,” an NYPD spokesperson said. “We applaud the fact that it is as a result of an internal NYPD disciplinary trial that these individuals are no longer members of this Police Department.”

A spokesperson for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez also spoke about the case.

“While investigating the trafficking of a teenage girl, our office learned of troubling allegations that she was sexually abused by two police officers years earlier,” the spokesperson said. “While the young victim repeatedly refused to participate in any criminal or other legal proceedings, we referred our findings to the Internal Affairs Bureau, ultimately leading to the officers’ termination.’’