 Memphis police officer Brandon Berry was accused in early 2013 of demanding oral sex from a man with an outstanding warrant in exchange for not taking him to jail.
Upon being questioned by police, Berry admitted to the crime, and was shortly thereafter indicted for official misconduct.
Berry plead guilty to the charge last month, but despite committing what amounts to extortion and rape, he was only given a one year suspended sentence with two years probation.
Here's the story as it went down according to the Berry's victim. Note, the officer has been accused of similar malfeasance in the past and appears to be a serial predator.
“I’ve got to go through this every day of my life,” said the man, who wants to remain anonymous.
It’s not something any man wants to talk about.
That’s why we’re protecting his identity, as well as that of his girlfriend.
“He is an extremely manly guy,” said his girlfriend. “The cop made him do things.”
“He made me perform some sexual acts,” he said.
He says it happened on January 18th as he drove home from his uncle’s house in Orange Mound.
A police officer pulled him over.
“As I was pulled over, the officer asked me a couple questions and I knew I had a warrant,” he said. “He was telling me ‘you know you have a warrant.”
He had an outstanding warrant for assault.
“He placed me in the back of the police car,” he said.
He says the police officer, Brandon Berry, did not take him to jail.
He says Officer Berry picked him up at the corner of Lamar and Semmes, then took him behind a Chinese restaurant and into an alley.
“He came around and let me out of the car and told me to get in the front seat,” he said. “He had his hand on his gun.”
“So, he had his hand on his gun and what was he telling you?” asked Reporter Sabrina Hall.
“Stuff I had to do for me not to go to jail,” he said.
He says the officer made him perform oral sex.
“I did it for a second but I said ‘I can’t do this, man! This aint me! I ain’t feeling to do this man,” he said. “He just sat there and just masturbated himself in the police car and I thought ‘man! This is crazy! I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
He says the officer then drove him back to his car.
“He was just telling me ‘I will see you out here again,” he said.
He says those words and what happened that night haunt him.
The next day he told his girlfriend.
“He was so nervous,” she said. “He thought that I was going to think bad things about him.”
She told her boyfriend to report the officer to Memphis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
“So when you went to report him, you didn`t know his name?” asked Hall.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “But I pointed him out in a line-up.”
He says police had Officer Berry’s photo in the line-up because Berry had been accused of similar things before.
“He had looked down at my private parts,” said Ryan Milligan.
Five months earlier, a teenager walking home from Airways Middle School said a crossing guard, Officer Berry, tried to get him in his patrol car.
“What was he saying when he was grabbing the steering wheel and licking his lips like that?” asked Hall.
“He was just like ‘how do you get big?’ ‘What do you do?’ ‘Do you want to make some money?” he said.
Milligan reported his story to Internal Affairs but investigators found the teen’s story could not be “proven” so Berry was allowed to continue working as a crossing guard and patrol officer and he able to pull over this man months later.
“That ‘aint right at all,” said the man. Call me crazy, but I fail to see how probation and a one year suspended sentence is in anyway a commensurate punishment for extortion and rape.
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