These two cops will never make another substantial arrest where they would have to testify again in a court room.

JOHN ANNESEOctober 7 at 9:30 AM ET

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell saved the jobs of two cops who lied on the stand about a gun arrest, arguing that their misconduct happened before the department changed its training on how cops should give testimony, the Daily News has learned. Officers Dornezia Agard and Gesly Jean told a grand jury in October 2016 that they were sitting in an unmarked car in Brooklyn when they saw and heard a man pull a gun from his waistband and throw it under a parked van, according to NYPD disciplinary documents that were recently made public. But Agard was in a separate police vehicle, and rolled up to the scene later, while Jean and other members of their 73rd Precinct Anti-Crime team were in the process of arresting the man. The team wanted to give Agard the Oct. 9 arrest because she was new to the unit, and she signed a criminal complaint saying she was there when the gun was tossed.

Once the deception came to light, the gun charges against the man were dismissed.Agard testified that she saw two men walking on the sidewalk, and when one of them littered, she approached him. “I then seen him remove a dark object from his waistband,” she said, describing the sound as “like a hard metal object that hit the ground.” She said she stopped the man and asked for ID, which he didn’t have, and Jean recovered the gun. Jean also testified that Agard witnessed the gun toss. After an internal disciplinary trial in March, Jeff Adler, the NYPD’s assistant deputy commissioner of trials recommended that both cops be fired. Not only did the officers compromise their ability to testify under oath in future cases, but they tanked what may have been a legitimate arrest, and a man with a loaded gun had his charges dismissed, Adler argued in April.The Brooklyn D.A.’s office has “disclosure letters” it sends out to defense attorneys about the two cops, law enforcement sources said. “When a member of the service deliberately provides false testimony, it not only has consequences for the individual case, as it did here, but it also undermines the public’s trust in its police,” Adler wrote. Agard has been reassigned to the Manhattan courts, Jean to the Bronx courts. Adler didn’t buy the cops’ contentions that they made honest mistakes on the stand, or that Agard used the word ‘I’ in her testimony she really meant to say ‘we.’”“There was no ambiguity in Agard’s account, no indication that she was merely relaying information thaat her team members had provided to her. Rather, she testified with great precision as to her own observations,” Adler wrote. Sewell decided to dock the officers 30 vacation days, and place them on dismissal probation for a year. The commissioner pointed out that the officers’ misconduct happened in 2016.“Since then, the Department has recognized deficiencies in testimony preparation and has instituted new training to properly prepare officers when documenting arrests and testifying at trial,” Sewell wrote. The duo “had been otherwise model officers,” Sewell wrote on June 24. “It is my belief that these officers can continue to be productive members of this department and will continue to serve the community in an exemplary manner.” When asked to elaborate on the new training referred to by Sewell’s letter, and to comment further on her decision, the NYPD’s press office sent The News a link to the “personnel” section of the department’s web site with no further explanation. It also sent, without further commentary, links to the NYPD’s database of disciplinary trial decisions and letters sent out when the commissioner doesn’t go along with a trial decision recommendation. The NYPD press office ignored a question about how many busts Agard and Jean made in the years following the incident. But law enforcement sources provided that information — neither cop has made an arrest since 2017.

Attempts to reach Agard and Jean were unsuccessful.© 2022 New York Daily News