A New York City police officer who is accused of sexually assaulting several women was convicted Friday of telling an 18-year-old that he would destroy a summons he was issuing her in exchange for oral sex.
After the jury found the officer, Wilfredo Rosario, guilty of official misconduct and attempted coercion, Justice Daniel P. FitzGerald of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered that he be held without bail. Mr. Rosario will face up to a year in jail behind bars when he is sentenced on Jan. 29.
Mr. Rosario faces unrelated charges — including sexual abuse and rape — involving three other women. Those will be decided in a separate trial.
Because of the conviction on Friday, Mr. Rosario was fired, a Police Department spokesman said.
Steven R. Fusfeld, Mr. Rosario’s lawyer, said he planned to appeal the conviction.
“We really are surprised and disappointed with the verdict,” Mr. Fusfeld said in an interview. “I just don’t think there was enough credible evidence to support the verdict.”
The case stemmed from an encounter in 2002 in which Mr. Rosario and his partner saw a woman, now 26, and her male friend sitting in Riverside Park after hours. Mr. Rosario took the woman to one side of the van, while his partner took the man to the other. The woman testified at trial that Mr. Rosario began asking her normal police questions for the summons, like her address and phone number, before the tenor changed.
He asked her if she was “going to make out” with her friend or have sex with him, she testified. She responded no. After that, the woman said, Mr. Rosario asked her if she would perform oral sex on him, agreeing to throw out the summons if she did.
The woman testified that she told Mr. Rosario that she would give him oral sex later, hoping it would buy her time to get out of the situation. They agreed to meet the following day at 4 p.m., she said. But she never again saw Mr. Rosario, she said, and she reported the incident to the authorities a few days later.
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