The Department of Investigation has withdrawn an offer to work for a Brooklyn prosecutor who was tipped to lead their police surveillance unit after it was alleged he sexually harassed female subordinates. over a decade.
The prosecutor, Charles M. Guria, was to enter as inspector general of the Police Department on September 12. But on Thursday, Jocelyn Strauber, commissioner of investigations, said his offer was dropped as was The New York Post publish accounts of several women, most of whom remain anonymous, accused Mr. Guria of making inappropriate comments and touching them while he worked at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
Ms Strauber called the allegations “deeply troubling” and said her department was looking into them.
The decision to further delay the attempt to take on a role was created to examine and review the Police Department’s policies and practices as a result of the era of stop and flee abuse. This role, which was vacant for eight months, has become more important as Mayor Eric Adams adopts more aggressive policy practices.
Contacted by phone on Thursday, Mr Guria, 61, denied that he had sexually harassed anyone during his 32-year career, and said he had never been the subject of a complaint. complain like that. He said he was disappointed he no longer had the supervisory role to look forward to, and questioned why his accusers had waited to be brought forward.
“I take allegations like this very seriously, but the reality is that I wasn’t the one who did these things,” he said.
Jane Manning, a former Queens prosecutor who now helps people who have been raped navigate the criminal justice system, said she has known about the allegations involving Mr Guria for more than a decade.
She said she received calls from several women after the Department of Investigation announced that he had been selected as the inspector general overseeing the Police Department. In that position, he will be responsible for overseeing the department’s compliance with any reforms to move beyond the Justice Department’s investigation into gender bias in its handling of sex crimes. .
The emotion, she said, was, “Of all the people appointed to lead a gender agency, how could it be this guy?”
“This is someone that bosses would warn their employees about,” she said.
The post’s report included a meme Mr Guria posted to Facebook showing a nude Barbie doll playing a stripper and a caption that read “‘It’s season’.”
Mr Guria admitted to reposting the meme and said it was “stupid” to do so.
Ms Strauber said her agency was not aware of the allegations brought against the Post, although Mr Guria was asked during a check about a blog comment posted nine years ago accusing him of “beating him up”. into” female colleagues.
“Mr. Guria denied the conduct and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office later referred to the DOI that Mr. Guria has never been disciplined during his 32 years in the office,” she said.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said it has no record of sexual misconduct complaints against Mr. Guria, who resigned this month.
Oren Yaniv, a spokesman, said: “We have zero tolerance for sexual harassment. “These are troubling allegations and no employee should feel uncomfortable in their workplace because of a colleague’s inappropriate behavior.”
Guria spent 20 years in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office overseeing investigations into police corruption and abuse. But he was demoted to a non-supervising role in a 2014 reorganization.
He was also a solicitor on the Mollen Commission, whose reports of corruption in the Police Department in the 1990s led to changes in hiring and discipline.
More recently, Mr. Guria was part of a group that spent three years retraining the city’s 36,000 police officers in the use of stop-and-go tactics after a federal judge found that the City using tactics that were racist and unconstitutional in 2013 .
The inspector general’s office released a number of key reports after it was established in 2014, including police use of force, bias investigations and a sex crime unit. But in recent years, it has struggled to fulfill its mission in the face of police resistance to outside surveillance. The office has not issued an investigative report since 2019.
Jeanene Barrett, who has served as inspector general since January, will continue in the role until the review is complete, a spokeswoman said.
