EX-COP Gloria Gonzalez has 1.25 million reasons to smile after winning a sexual-retaliation case against the NYPD – but she’s not.
Gonzalez’s voice dropped to a bare whisper yesterday as she described the ugly end of her career as a cop – hounded out of her uniform for complaining about her alleged mistreatment.
“I went through a horrific time, and I never want to go back,” she said softly. “I was so scared, I became anorexic, I became paranoid, I thought about suicide all the time.”
Gonzalez – and a number of scared women cops still on the job, who spoke to The Post on the condition they not be identified – say sexual abuse and harassment by male officers is so bad, they don’t think women should join the NYPD.
“This is not the Stone Age, but that is how they act,” said one woman, who broke down in tears several times while telling her story.
“I swear to you, if I have to hold my daughters’ hands for the rest of their lives to make sure they will never, ever become police officers, that’s what I will do.”
Gonzalez brought sexual-harassment charges six years ago against her boss in the 45th Precinct station house in The Bronx. She claimed he punished her with bad assignments after she refused his persistent sexual advances.
She was soon transferred to another station house and targeted for abuse and investigations in retaliation for speaking out.
A former NYPD investigator testified the abuse reached all the way up to former Chief of Personnel Michael Markman, who put Gonzalez’s name on a “hit list” of problem officers to be drummed off the force.
Gonzalez says the mistreatment by the boys in blue continued even after she was forced to resign in 1996 because of the harassment.
The lowest point came when she was arrested for running a red light, held in custody for over 24 hours, strip-searched and cuffed to a chair. She was eventually acquitted on all charges stemming from that arrest.
Last week, she won $1.25 million from the city – which vows to appeal. The city corporation counsel’s office blasted the verdict as a “travesty of justice.” It also charged that Gonzalez refused to take a drug test and abused the department’s sick-leave policy.
Nevertheless, Gonzalez and several of her sister officers said the win won’t change much.
One female officer, who’s been on the force for over a decade, said the rough treatment she received on the job began the moment she walked through Police Academy doors.
“I had an instructor look down at me [during an exercise] and say, ‘I know you can spread those legs wider,'” she said.
Then as a rookie cop, she was attacked in a squad car by a superior.
“He grabbed my t- -s, and I punched him in his b- – -s,” she said. “He ended up apologizing, saying, ‘You can’t blame a guy for trying,'”
“The sick part is, as cops we lock people up for that kind of s- – -, but when you’re a cop it’s somehow OK,” she said bitterly.
WOMEN make up roughly 10 percent of the 40,000-member city police force, which the officer says is too small a percentage to change entrenched, good ol’ boy attitudes.
“The general attitude is: Women don’t belong, they’re a guest here,” said the officer, who comes from a big family of officers – all men. “But all I ever wanted to be was a cop, and I’m good at it.”
This veteran officer said incoming female cops have to decide from the moment they put on the uniform “how much they’re going to take” from male officers and superiors.
“You’re going to get your a- – grabbed, you’re going to get hit on,” she said. “You have to find your niche, and decide what you’re going to take and what you’re not going to take.
“There’s a lot of infantile comments that go along with it, guys telling you to bend over so they can see how you take it – stuff that’s just some a- – – – – e mouthing off,” she said.
The officer, a tough cop who is proud of the broken bones and teeth she’s suffered while collaring criminals, insisted she never considered complaining.
“You’re a cop, you’ve got a gun, you do what you need to do to protect yourself,” she said.
But other women said the usual rules of society don’t apply inside police precincts and patrol cars.
“Any normal guy, he goes into a bar, hits on someone, and she says no, he just walks away,” said another female cop. “But these [cops], they’re going to get what they want no matter what. They don’t take no for an answer. Believe me, that blue wall does exist.”
When this officer complained about her treatment by some male officers, her supervisor ordered her to undergo a psychiatric exam – which she says was a way of both punishing her for complaining and discrediting her accusation if she took it further.
“It’s very hard to stand up to these people, they ruined every single person that this s- -t happened to,” said the woman, her voice breaking through sobs.
“I used to be a good cop, and they ruined me,” she cried. “They wreck your life, they take your whole soul.”
ALL of the women who spoke to The Post said that, as bad as the harassment was, the retaliation inflicted on them after they complained was far, far worse – everything from epithets about them scrawled on station-house walls to suspected sabotage of their cars.
‘You can end up in a situation where you don’t get back up, and that kind of retaliation can literally cost you your life,” said one. “It’s not an exaggeration, it happened to me. The NYPD is the sixth crime family of New York, that’s how I feel at this point.”
In Gloria Gonzalez’s case, the federal jury dismissed her sex-harassment claim, but found she had been retaliated against for complaining.
One of Gonzalez’s lawyers, Norman Senior, used his closing statements at the trial to accuse cops of erecting a “blue wall of perjury” to fight Gonzalez’s accusations.
Her other lawyer, Paul Shoemaker, said police officials make sure “the wall falls on” anyone who speaks out.
All of the women interviewed were adamant the NYPD’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity – charged with investigating harassment complaints – spends most of its resources trying to dig up dirt on those who file complaints.
The former head of that office, Sandra Marsh, recently won a $1 million settlement against the city after she was forced out of the job after criticizing the handling of an NYPD sex-harassment charge against police brass in Staten Island.
NYPD spokesman Tom Antenen said the department “strongly rejects” the accusation that it doesn’t seriously investigate discrimination or sexual-harassment claims.
“Anyone familiar with this department knows that just isn’t true,” he said.
Gonzalez, who is still suing in The Bronx for malicious prosecution from the red-light arrest, says the situation is so bad, she would encourage other women not to come forward.
“Don’t do it, it’s not worth it. They haven’t changed, and they won’t.”