A Middlesex Superior Court jury found Watertown Police officer Kevin Rooney not guilty in the trial in which he faced two counts of rape and one count of indecent assault from an incident in 2021.
Rooney has been placed on administrative leave by the Watertown Police, and Watertown Police Chief Justin Hanrahan told WBUR that he will remain on leave pending the results of the Police Department’s internal affairs investigation.
Rooney also had his police certification suspended by the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission when he was indicted on the charges in December 2022.
A woman who accused Rooney told prosecutors that she blacked out after three alcoholic drinks while at dinner in South Boston, and the next thing she next remembered was waking up next to a man she didn’t know. The man told her he was an off-duty Watertown Police officer, and he told her they had “hooked up,” according to court documents obtained by WBUR.
Below is a excerpt from the document linked to in the article.
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At approximately 12:02 am they can be seen walking behind the defendant, as he held her hand leading her out of the bar, During this time is not wearing shoes.
He stated that they had taken a Lyft to his house and that she had vomited in the car and ‘again in his bed when they arrived to his house. He had taken her clothes and the sheets to wash them after putting her in the shower. She later located her underwear, wet, in the shower.
She asked Rooney something to the effect of “so nothing happened then right?” to which he responded by telling her that she was “handsy” when she got out of the shower and that they had hooked up. She ‘became upset and made a comment that she thought that was “messed up” given the situation and he responded that he “realized that now”.
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So the town just foots the bill for a $7m sexual harassment case and now we have an officer taking a women home from the bar with no shoes on, clearly incapacitated, and having sex with them. The amount of poor judgement displayed in that one document should be grounds for removal from the Watertown PD. How is the community supposed to trust an officer that would not only put themselves in that situation but then handle it so poorly.
We, the residents, must keep our eye on our Police Department and call out immoral or abusive behavior, even if it falls short of a convicted crime. The behavior described in court documents (thank you for copying here, Mr. York) falls morally short of what I would expect in a law enforcement officer. For context, the city didn’t just pay millions to settle a lawsuit for sexual harassment by police toward one of their own (a woman)… but also that harassment continued for years IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW. Get it? Our police department was breaking the law all that time. I hope our new Police Chief will be more protective of womens’ rights going forward.