Former New York City police officer Justin Volpe, who sodomized a detainee with a broomstick while he was in custody at a Brooklyn precinct in 1997, was released early from federal prison despite the opposition from prosecutors who said he had committed "one of the most heinous crimes in New York City's history."
Volpe, now 51, has served 24 years of a 30-year sentence for the attack of Abner Louima, The New York Post reported. Volpe was transferred from a facility in Sandstone, Minnesota, to "community confinement" in New York, according to a federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman.
"Community confinement means the inmate is in either home confinement or a … halfway house," the spokesman said.
Volpe was sentenced after admitting to sodomizing Louima in a precinct bathroom while the victim was handcuffed inside the 70th Precinct in Kensington.
Louima suffered severe wounds to his rectum and bladder and had to undergo extensive surgeries. He received an $8.75 million settlement from the city in 2001.
The Bureau of Prisons said it couldn't elaborate on the reasons Volpe was being transferred or the release plans for him, citing safety and security concerns.
According to online records, Volpe is in New York's Residential Reentry Management program. Currently, nearly 7,900 inmates in the program are in halfway houses and nearly 6,000 are in home confinement.
The transfer comes two years after Volpe was denied compassionate release from prison, a bid the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office opposed.
"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 Brooklyn office said.
Judge Eugene Nickerson, who sentenced Volpe in December 1998, said at the time that "short of intentional murder, one cannot imagine a more barbarous misuse of power."
Louima was in custody after Volpe claimed he hit him when police broke up a party on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Aug. 9, 1997.
Volpe also threatened to kill Louima if he told anyone about the sexual assault but then bragged to his fellow officers about the assault.
Volpe pleaded guilty about halfway through his trial to the battery and sexual assault of Louima and to assaulting another innocent man.
While seeking release two years ago, Volpe said in a letter that he took "full responsibility and live with the pain" for his actions, and that for "over two decades, I have tried to live in a way to make up for it."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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