Ex-NYPD cop who brutalized black man at Brooklyn precinct in 1997 released from prison

A former NYPD officer who brutalized an innocent man at a Brooklyn precinct in 1997 has been released from federal prison after serving 24 years of his 30-year sentence.

Justin Volpe, 51, was jailed in 1999 after he sexually assaulted Abner Louima with a broomstick in the toilets inside the 70th Precinct in Kensington following his arrest outside a nightclub.

He admitted to sodomizing Louima who suffered a ruptured colon and bladder as a result of the horrific assault and he spent two months in hospital having required three major surgeries. Louima later received an $8.7million payout by the city in 2001.

Volpe has been transferred from a prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, to 'community confinement' in New York, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons told The Free Lance.

His release date was on January 10, records show, which is almost two years earlier than the previously listed earliest eligibility for freedom of January 9, 2025. 

Justin Volpe, 51, who brutalized an innocent man at a Brooklyn precinct in 1997 has been released from federal prison after serving 24 years of his 30-year sentence

He was jailed in 1999 after he sexually assaulted Abner Louima with a broomstick in the toilets inside the 70th Precinct in Kensington following his arrest outside a nightclub

He admitted to sodomizing Louima who suffered a ruptured colon and bladder as a result of the horrific assault and he spent two months in hospital having required three major surgeries

The Bureau of Prisons said he had been transferred to 'community confinement' which means 'the inmate is in either home confinement or a… halfway house'.

It said it could not elaborate on 'reasons for transfer, or specific release plans,' and pointed to 'privacy, safety, and security reasons'.

Volpe is currently in New York's Residential Reentry Management program, where there almost 7,900 inmates in halfway houses and nearly 6,000 under home confinement.

'I wish everybody well that involved with my case,' he said. 'I have nothing but love in my heart for all of New York City and everybody in my case involved, especially Mr Louima.

'I wish us all peace, I just want to rebuild my life at the pace that I am able to. God bless everyone.'

The disgraced cop's move to 'community confinement' comes two years after he was denied compassionate release when he admitted to a judge that he 'committed a serious wrong'.

It was strongly opposed by the Brooklyn US Attorney's Office which called his assault 'one of the most heinous crimes in New York City's history'.

'His actions were premeditated, brutal and brazen, evincing a clear belief that he was above the law and that his victims' lives, quite simply, did not matter,' the filing said.

Volpe wrote a handwritten letter which said he took 'full responsibility and live with the pain' the attack had caused.

'For over two decades I have tried to live in a way to make up for it,' he said. 'I do not seek to evade just punishment for my crime. But… it is my family who is being punished more.'

Louima later received an $8.7million payout from the city in 2001 after the brutal assault

Louima pictured in May 2021 alongside New York City Mayor Eric Adams

Thousands of demonstrators marched across Brooklyn Bridge in August 1997 to protest the beating and sexual assault of Haitian immigrant Louima

During sentencing in December 1999, Judge Eugene Nickerson said: 'Short of intentional murder, one cannot imagine a more barbarous misuse of power.'

Louima was arrested in Flatbush, Brooklyn on August 9, 1997, when Volpe claimed he hit him when officers were breaking up a party. 

The ex-cop committed the brutal assault in the police station toilets and then threatened to kill Louima if he told anyone about it.

He then emerged from the bathroom holding a pair of blood-soaked leather gloves before declaring: 'I broke a man down.'

At first Volpe denied the assault, and even called on a colleague Charles Schwartz to testify on his behalf. Schwartz was convicted of perjury over the cover up and sentenced to serve five years.

It was only until halfway through the trial when he pleaded guilty to battery and sexual abuse of Louima and the assault of another innocent man. 

Volpe admitted during his trial that he targeted Louima in retaliation for a punch thrown at his head in a brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush. 

It later emerged another man had thrown the punch.

Volpe claimed the attack was not racially motivated, pointing to the fact that he was at the time in a three-year cohabitational relationship with a black woman.

Louima had moved to New York from Haiti seven years before the attack. He used some of the payout to pay for schooling for children in his homeland.