Ex-NYPD officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata are known in tabloid parlance as the “Rape Cops”; Moreno was accused of raping a Manhattan woman who he and Mata escorted home after she passed out in a taxi. Moreno was acquitted of rape in 2011—but convicted of other charges for taking the woman’s keys and placing a fake 911 call as a pretext to repeatedly re-enter her apartment, where he admitted to getting into her bed with her.
Moreno, who served a year in jail, is now suing his accuser and New York City for $175 million:
The civil-rights lawsuit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on Wednesday claims that the rape allegations against Moreno and his widely watched trial unjustly damaged his reputation and caused him to suffer financially.
“Mr. Moreno is forever scarred with the scarlet letter of ‘Rape Cop,’” his attorney Eric Sanders said in a statement. “Mr. Moreno hopes this lawsuit will vindicate his name and make the schemers pay for their malicious conduct.”
Moreno also alleges that he was “unfairly targeted for prosecution due to his Puerto Rican ancestry.”
