Here is a good example of how being an “LEO” (Law Enforcement Officer for those of you not in the know) means getting treated differently than the rest of us. If one of the non-LEO readers here were to have allegations of sexual assault leveled against him by two separate women he’d likely be arrested. He might get out on bail if he can afford the bail. If you’re a cop, why you don’t get arrested, you don’t lose your job, you get to keep working (admittedly riding a desk), and you have your own buddies in Internal Affairs doing the investigation.
HER BACK PRESSED against the wall, Dagma Rodriguez stood in a dark bedroom as Officer Thomas Tolstoy moved closer. She trembled in fear.
It was just after 5 p.m. on April 3, 2008, during a drug raid on the West Kensington rowhouse where she lived. Tolstoy had ordered her into the room, telling her that he needed to talk, she said.
“He started rubbing my breasts, rubbing my nipples,” said Rodriguez, a 33-year-old mother of three. “I was so scared. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking.”
Rodriguez said she grabbed Tolstoy’s wrists to try to make him stop. He didn’t, she said.
” ‘You’ve got some big t–s. I love these t–s. I bet you’ve got big bras. What size are you?’ ” she said he asked. ” ‘Can I see them? Let me see them.’ ”
“I said, ‘No! No!’ I was so nervous, I started crying. He told me to shut the f— up . . . . He kept rubbing me and I started crying more.”
Rodriguez is one of at least three women, including Lady Gonzalez, of Kensington, who say they were fondled and groped by an officer. Rodriguez and Gonzalez later identified the officer as Tolstoy. Police sources say that Tolstoy is also the focus of an investigation into the third woman’s complaint.
Officer Tolstoy works with officer Jeffrey Cujdik who is also under investigation for another string of incidents involving mom-&-pop stores where the cops would reportedly come into the store, disable the security cameras and then take cash and goods from the store. They were pretty good at it too until they ran into one guy who was into tech stuff and set up his camera system to record at his home and part of the raid was captured.
Neither, Cujdik, Tolstoy nor any of the other officers involved have been arrested. They are being investigated. If these guys weren’t cops they’d have been arrested already.
More on Cujdik and his gang here.
More: Dave Krueger, commenting at Radley Balko’s site, noted that the article refers to the incident as “misconduct”. If one of the non-LEO readers here were to be involved in a similar situation it would be called sexual assault. And note that they’ve shown this thug a thing or two, they took away his gun and put him on a desk (as noted by Michael Chaney, another commenter at Mr. Balko’s site). Both good points, IMO. And here is the real reason Tolstoy is on a desk,
“Until we investigate further, we don’t want him taking police action,” DiLacqua said. “We don’t want to expose the city to other accusations or to any liability or risk.”
Not that he is a threat to the public, but because he might cost Philidelphia’s public coffers more money if they let this guy run around continuing like he has. Government you can believe in.
