Last year, New York City was roiled by news that a New York Police Department sergeant had been charged with possession and solicitation of child pornography. But that wasn’t even the half of it. On Thursday, it was revealed that NYPD internal affairs investigators obtained Skype chat logs showing the cop instructing a woman on how to molest her baby.
In February 2013, Alberto Randazzo, a 15-year veteran of the force, was arrested on 57 state charges of using, promoting, and possessing sexual performances by children. He was one of 70 people in the New York area–including at least one other NYPD cop–who was ensnared in a massive child porn bust last year. Police found? 23 images and videos of lewd sex acts with children dating back to 2010 on both his laptop in Queens and his cell phone. Some of the children depicted are as young as 1 or 2 years old. He was released on $40,000 bail, only to be arrested again in February 2014–this time on federal charges of downloading 30 lewd images of children while on bail. According to federal agents, Randazzo admitted to downloading the images. Randazzo has been in the Metropolitan Detention Center without bail since then; a federal magistrate in Brooklyn declared he was a danger to the community. Needless to say, he has been suspended without pay since his 2013 arrest. It seems the only reason he still nominally has a job is because police commissioner Bill Bratton is waiting for the trial to play out.
On Thursday, the (New York) Daily News revealed that Randazzo has been indicted on federal charges related to the most chilling anecdote of this affair–a recording of Randazzo directing a woman to molest her infant child. According to a filing by NYPD Internal Affairs, 11 Skype video files on Randazzo’s laptop showed Randazzo directing the woman, who has been identified as Keira Norton, to perform sex acts on her 1-year-old child. The videos were made in late 2010, when Norton was living in Colorado. After Norton was identified in the videos last year, she was arrested on state porn charges. She is currently being held at Rikers Island on $100,000 bail. There’s no word on how the baby is doing, though I would lay odds that (s)he’s going to need a LOT of counseling.
If convicted on all charges, Randazzo could face decades in prison. The federal charges carry a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years, while the state charges carry a maximum of 15 years. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Randazzo faces a minimum sentence of between 19 and 24 years, since he is accused of having a minor under 12 years old commit a sex act. Hopefully, between them federal and state prosecutors will find a way to keep Randazzo in prison for as long as legally possible. And that would be true even if he had the good sense to plead guilty. After all, what happened here is an example of behavior that society simply cannot even appear to tolerate. Persuading someone to break the law who might not otherwise be predisposed to do so is bad enough, but the fact this was a police officer engaged in this is absolutely heinous.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
