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Gay Cop Sues NYPDGay cop slaps NYPD with discrimination lawsuitBY BARBARA ROSS and ADAM NICHOLS DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Saturday, September 29th 2007, 12:34 AM A gay cop charged yesterday he has been persecuted with death threats and homophobic slurs in the NYPD. Officer Michael Harrington, a five-year veteran, said in a suit filed yesterday the hostility is so pervasive he cannot escape it - despite moving to five different precincts. One supervisor mockingly told him he was being sent to the West Village "to be with his people," the suit said. He said an officer at that precinct told him, "All faggots should be shot." Harrington, who works out of the Manhattan South task force, told the Daily News yesterday he regrets telling colleagues he is gay. "I didn't anticipate this would happen," he said. "Every place I've been to, the same thing keeps happening again and again." Harrington, 30, who lives in Westchester with his partner, a correction officer, said colleagues in his first precinct, in East New York, Brooklyn, began calling him a "faggot" after he told them he was gay. While responding to an assault call, he said another cop shouted, "You f------ faggot" at him in front of the victim. Another threatened to, "Kick your a--, you faggot," the legal papers say. After receiving a death threat in the interdepartmental mail, he complained to his Patrolmen's Benevolent Association delegate, he said. He said the union rep tore up the letter in front of him. Three requests for a transfer got "lost" before he was moved, he said. Harrington's suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, accuses the Police Department and the city of discrimination and seeks unspecified damages. "The actions of the defendants ... were intentional, unjustifiable, willful and malicious," it says. The court papers detail a string of homophobic taunts. While taking a suspect to a bathroom to wash pepper spray off his face, officers shouted, “Don’t do anything to him in the bathroom. We know he’s your type,” the legal papers said. After arresting a female shoplifter, Harrington was told to carry her purse because it suited him, he said. At a Christmas party, Harrington and his partner were snubbed by other cops and made to sit on their own, away from other officers, the legal papers said. Harrington's is the latest in a long list of complaints of homophobia in the NYPD. In 1997, 800 gay and lesbian cops filed a discrimination suit that was eventually settled out of court. "We have not seen the lawsuit and neither has the Law Department. However, the Police Department takes all allegations of discrimination seriously and in no way condones retaliation," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said. anichols@nydailynews.com With Alison Gendar |