NYPD cop from Hempstead gets no bail in insurance fraud case
because he had been involved in assaulting women in 2013 and 2015
Updated August 5, 2016 6:32 PM
By John Riley john.riley@newsday.com
NYPD highway cop Carlos Becker in court in the Bronx Court July 26, 2013 for an inappropriate and possibly corrupt relationship with a woman he arrested for drunk driving. Photo Credit: New York Daily News / Enid Alvarez
HIGHLIGHTS
Department has suspended Carlos Becker
Prosecutors say he’s been involved in assaulting women
An NYPD cop from Hempstead charged with insurance fraud was held without bail on Friday by a federal magistrate in Brooklyn after prosecutors said he was too dangerous to release because he had been involved in assaulting women in 2013 and 2015.
Carlos Becker, 39, a 13-year NYPD veteran, was arrested this week and charged with arson-for-hire on his Range Rover in 2012 to collect on a phony insurance claim. After hearing the new allegations Friday, Magistrate Steven Gold ordered him temporarily detained until Aug. 17, to give his lawyer time to respond.
Prosecutors told Gold that Erica Noonan, a woman Becker arrested on drunken driving charges in 2013, has accused him of taking suggestive videos, pressuring her into a date, taking her home after she got groggy and assaulting her.
They said he was also accused of assault last year by a London woman who was dating him. “He threatened to punch her in the face and put his hands around her neck,” FBI agent Andrew Taff, the only witness, told Gold.
Taff said no assault charges were filed in that case. Becker was tried in the Bronx on official misconduct charges in the Noonan incident and acquitted. A civil suit filed by Noonan against him, pending in Manhattan federal court, says no assault charges were filed.
Becker’s lawyer, Colleen Brady of Manhattan, told Gold she needed time to gather evidence to respond to the allegations, and declined to comment afterward.
After his arrest on Wednesday, federal prosecutors submitted both a sealed and an unsealed letter to the court seeking detention of Becker.
The unsealed letter noted his status as a police officer, and said that in addition to burning his Range Rover in 2012, he set fire to a BMW in 2015 in a similar scheme after learning the earlier incident was under investigation.
“Setting fire to the BMW on a residential street in Brooklyn after being made aware that law enforcement was investigating his role in the 2012 fire evidences the defendant’s callous and brazen disregard for the safety of the community,” the government said.
Becker has been suspended by the NYPD.