NEW YORK — A former suburban New York police chief who as soon as led the Gilgo Beach killings investigation and later went to jail for beating a suspect was arrested once more Tuesday for allegedly soliciting intercourse at Long Island park.
James Burke, Suffolk County’s chief of police from 2012 to 2015, was taken into custody by park rangers round 10:15 a.m. at Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park in Farmingville, a spokesperson for County Executive Steve Bellone stated.
Burke, 58, is charged with providing a intercourse act, public lewdness, indecent publicity, and prison solicitation, Bellone’s spokesperson Marykate Guilfoyle stated.
Burke’s lawyer in his earlier case died final 12 months. It wasn’t instantly clear if he had a lawyer who might communicate on his behalf relating to Tuesday’s arrest. The Suffolk County district legal professional’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Burke led the Suffolk County Police Department for a tumultuous three-year interval that culminated in his arrest and responsible plea to federal prices for beating a handcuffed man suspected of stealing pornography, intercourse toys and different objects from his division SUV.
The scandal additionally toppled the county’s longtime district legal professional and the county’s prime corruption prosecutor, who have been convicted of serving to Burke cowl up the beating.
During his tenure, Burke oversaw the high-profile investigation into the deaths of a number of intercourse employees whose stays have been discovered within the space of Gilgo Beach on a desolate stretch of Long Island shoreline.
Burke has been accused of impeding the long-stalled investigation by blocking the police division’s cooperation with federal authorities. A person suspected of committing a minimum of three of the killings was arrested earlier this summer time.
Burke resigned in late 2015, simply earlier than federal prosecutors charged him within the beating and cover-up that put him behind bars. He pleaded responsible in 2016 to violating sufferer Christopher Loeb’s civil rights and obstructing justice for main a conspiracy to hide his involvement within the assault.
Burke served 40 months in jail and was launched in April 2019. A subsequent three-year time period of supervised launch, a type of probation, ended final 12 months.
Burke attacked Loeb in a police station interrogation room after Loeb was arrested for breaking into the ex-chief’s unlocked, department-issued GMC Yukon and stealing a bag containing his gun belt, ammunition, a field of cigars and a bag containing intercourse toys and pornography.
Loeb’s three-year jail sentence was vacated after Burke pleaded responsible. Authorities suspect he was stealing from automobiles to purchase heroin.
Former Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and the chief of Spota’s anti-corruption bureau, Christopher McPartland, have been convicted in December 2019 of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy prices for serving to cowl up the assault.
Spota, 81, and McPartland, 57, are each serving five-year jail sentences.
According to federal prosecutors, Spota, McPartland, Burke and different law enforcement officials met and spoke by telephone to debate the right way to conceal Burke’s position within the assault on Loeb. In addition to pressuring individuals to not cooperate, they requested witnesses to supply investigators with false data and withhold related data from investigators, federal prosecutors stated.
Spota and Burke had a kinship that dated to the ex-chief’s teenage years within the late Seventies, when he was a star witness in a homicide case that Spota was prosecuting.
Spota later employed Burke to work in his workplace as an investigator and vouched for him when he was appointed chief of police, one of many largest suburban forces within the nation with 2,500 officers.
Burke began out as a New York City police officer within the mid-Nineteen Eighties however quickly moved to the Suffolk County division, the place he held numerous roles earlier than turning into chief, together with as an undercover narcotics investigator.
Burke, who’s single and has no youngsters, has confronted earlier allegations associated to intercourse employees.
In 1995, a division probe discovered Burke had a private relationship with a lady engaged in prostitution and drug dealing, in accordance with a Newsday report.
In 2016, shortly after his conviction on federal prices, a lady who stated she labored as an escort accused Burke of hiring her for a drug-fueled celebration on Long Island.
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