A top Brooklyn cop at the center of an alleged love triangle played favorites for his precinct mistresses and blamed one of his lieutenants for the press leak about the scandal — retaliating by booting her to the lobster shift, a new lawsuit alleges.
NYPD Lt. Kamal Roper told The Post that the shift switch, which included a change from a daytime weekday assignment to a midnight slot with weekend work, was the last straw for her in the “hostile and stressful” environment created by police Capt. Frantz Souffrant in the 78th Precinct.
Roper, a 22-year NYPD veteran, claims in court documents that Souffrant — who garnered headlines in June when details of his alleged trysts with Detective Ileen Estevez and Officer Noemi Sierra made it to social media — gave the two female subordinates cushy shifts, such as New Year’s Eve detail, and tried to pad their arrest stats to make them look good.
Souffrant repeatedly doled out “preferential treatment to female officers who have not demonstrated any skills or proficiency on the job and receive positions that they are not qualified for because of having personal relationships with them,” reads the suit filed Wednesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The lieutenant voiced her concern to Souffrant about his “gender-based favoritism, and the hostile work environment for women” in March, but he ignored the complaint, her suit claims.
The next month, when news broke of his alleged romantic life inside the precinct, Souffrant blamed Roper for the leak because of her previous work at the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which knew about the claims, and transferred her to the midnight shift, according to the suit.
It was unclear if Souffrant faced any internal charges for possibly violating internal policies over the alleged relationships.
Roper also claims in her suit that the supervisor was derelict in his duties as a commanding officer, including during a series of bomb threats at city schools in May.
She said she tried to reach him to no avail and eventually decided to control the scene without her superior, making the tough call to not evacuate the schools while sweeping the buildings for explosives.
About an hour later, Souffrant called Roper, unaware of the situation, “to go over some perceived deficiencies” and hung up on the lieutenant without direction when she told him of the “very serious situation, respectfully,” the suit says.
Her lawyer, John Scola, told the Post, “Rather than perpetrating the adverse actions against her subordinates, Lt Roper stood up to Souffrant and is now vindictively facing the possibility of being demoted.”
Souffrant was unable to be reached.
An NYPD rep said, “We will review the lawsuit if and when we are served.”
The city Law Department added that it “will review the case.”
