By Jay Weaver
Former Hialeah police office Jesus Menocal Jr. agreed to a plea deal that will send him to prison for up to three years on misdemeanor charges for pressuring three victims into sex acts while he was on duty. BY COURTESY: CBS4
During a morning shift in December 2019, a squad of FBI agents arrived at the Hialeah Police Department with an arrest warrant and hauled away officer Jesús Menocal Jr. in handcuffs on federal charges of using his badge to pressure several young women into having sex with him while on duty.
Menocal, known for his swaggering style on the force, kept a low profile for two years as he faced the grim prospect of going to prison for life if convicted of the main felony charge at a civil rights sex-assault trial set for this month.
Now, under a plea deal reached with Miami federal prosecutors, Menocal could serve up to three years in prison. Prosecutors would not discuss the deal but sources said it was struck because of the risk of proving a criminal case built on victims, including a few former sex workers, that defense attorneys might discredit on the witness stand.
During a Friday afternoon hearing before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, the fired officer pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges accusing him of depriving three of his victims of their constitutional rights when he forced them to touch his penis, perform oral sex or have intercourse, according to federal court records.
The three incidents were part of a series of complaints dating back to 2014 and 2015 that included alleged oral sex involving a 14-year-old girl.
Menocal’s plea agreement, signed by him, his defense attorneys and prosecutors, was reviewed and accepted by Williams, who set his sen-tencing for May 12.
At the end of the plea hearing, Menocal’s defense attorneys alerted the judge that he had been targeted on the internet with threats because of the nature of his crimes. They asked Williams to seal Menocal’s statement filed with the plea agreement. She refused but asked the FBI to look into the threats, including an Instagram photo of a gun pointed at Menocal’s head.
Menocal, 34, whose family members attended the hear-ing, admitted to his crimes while being questioned by the judge but said nothing else. His defense attorneys, Jude Faccidomo and Mycki Ratzan, said after his guilty plea that he “wanted to put this behind him” and “move on with his life.”
One of Menocal’s victims, who showed up for his court appearance, said she wanted to witness his admission of guilt. “I wanted to see it for myself,” she told the Miami Herald.
As part of his plea agreement, Menocal agreed to surrender his police license and not reapply for any law enforcement position. Still, with a misdemeanor con-viction, he could possess a weapon and resume work in a firearms training school that is owned by his family. His father, Jesus Menocal Sr., is the former police chief in Sweetwater.
In addition, under the fed-eral civil rights statute in his case, Menocal is not required to register as a sex offender with the state of Florida. As part of the plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the first felony charge in Men-ocal’s indictment is going to be dropped — though he has acknowledged the victim’s allegation in a statement filed in court.
The charge alleged that in June 2015 he stopped a 17-year-old girl, took her to a Hialeah police station, and forced her to undress in a camera-less room while pres-suring her to have sex. That original charge included an accusation of “kidnapping” that carries up to life in pri-son.
The three misdemeanor counts to which Menocal has agreed to plead guilty don’t include any reference to that aggravating factor or threatening the use of his police-issued weapon, which carries up to 10 years’ im-prisonment.
So, as misdemeanors, the counts come with far less punishment under federal law — up to one year each. Although a prosecuting team led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Stamm did not indicate why they offered Menocal the plea deal, several sources say there was concern that his victims would not hold up under cross examination by defense attorneys who planned to question them about their past, including prostitution in some instances.
Menocal’s arrest came one month after the Miami Herald reported that his alleged misconduct was first revealed to Hialeah police in 2015, when four women and girls told investigators that the sergeant had assaulted them.
The youngest victim was just 14 when she said Menocal forced her to perform oral sex after threatening her with jail time if she didn’t comply. The oldest victim, in her 20s, fell out of a moving car and died just months after being questioned by authorities.
POLICE
DELAYED FIRING
As a result of the com-plaints, an internal affairs probe and a state attorney’s investigation, Hialeah Police Chief Sergio Velázquez tem-porarily suspended Menocal with pay. But the chief did not fire Menocal until the FBI arrested the 13-year police veteran in December 2019 — more than four years after the victims initially lodged their complaints.
Menocal kept his gun and badge for much of that time, even receiving a raise. PORTAL@MIAMIHERALD.COM Velázquez said repeatedly that he could not discipline Menocal because of departmental policies, although policing experts and former chiefs from other South Florida departments told the Miami Herald that wasn’t true.
The office of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle declined to charge Menocal with sexual battery and false im-prisonment in 2016, saying the victims would make un-reliable witnesses in court. Some were victims of human trafficking.
The investigation was then picked up by FBI pub-lic corruption agents and federal prosecutors, who dug deeper into Menocal’s alleged misconduct on duty.
In his plea agreement and factual statement filed on Friday, Menocal admitted to using his authority as a police officer to deprive three female victims of “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
In court papers, federal prosecutors elaborated on how Menocal preyed on the three victims who formed the basis of the criminal case against him — though authorities cited several other alleged victims.
In January 2015, a teen-age girl identified as “Victim #2” was walking from her mother’s home to her boyfriend’s house when she noticed Menocal’s marked Hialeah police truck. The teen ran into a couple of male friends and got into their car.
Menocal followed them and activated his lights and a siren. He told the girl to exit the car and wait by his police truck and then directed the two friends to drive away. Menocal told the girl to meet him at a nearby alley in an industrial area, where he “removed his gun belt, unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis, and started to masturbate,” according to court papers.
“He asked her to ‘help him out’ and then he placed [her] hand on his penis and moved it back and forth,” the papers state. “[Menocal], who was over a foot taller than [her], bent down, grabbed her, and began to kiss her and squeeze her breast over her bra. He then asked her to turn around and remove her pants. She declined, telling him that she was on her period.”
Menocal told the teen that he was not arresting her but that she should not tell anyone about what had happened. He dropped her off in the area where he had first seen her.
About five months later, a 19-year-old woman identified as “Victim #3” was driving in a car with her boyfriend and began banging her head against the vehicle’s window and talking about killing herself. The boyfriend drove her to a Hialeah police substation for help. Instead, officers handcuffed the woman and her boyfriend after finding cocaine and marijuana in the car.
Menocal, the ranking officer at the substation, approached the handcuffed young woman and repeatedly told her he would release her if she performed oral sex on him, according to court papers. Menocal then told her to ask to use the substation’s bathroom, which she did, and escorted her into the substation — something captured on exterior surveillance cameras. Once inside, Menocal took her to an area that was out of view of the facility’s cameras. There, Menocal took off her handcuffs and made her perform oral sex — before putting the cuffs back on her wrists and telling her not to tell anyone about what had happened.
The victim was identified thanks to the surveillance footage. Other footage showed Menocal taking a total of 11 women into the Hialeah police substation in a one-month period between May and June 2015, according to prosecutors.
“All of these incidents occurred on the weekend or after 5:00 p.m.,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
“The video evidence then shows the defendant bringing each of these women into closed rooms in the substation that were not covered by the surveillance system.”
Menocal did not file reports documenting any of these encounters, a violation of police protocol.
Another 19-year-old woman, identified as Victim #5, came forward to Hialeah police after the Herald broke the story about Menocal’s misconduct in November 2019.
The woman told police that in late 2014, Menocal pulled up to her in his marked police vehicle as she was walking down the street to a Hialeah gym. She said Menocal told her the neighborhood wasn’t safe and offered to give her a ride. She refused, but prosecutors said Menocal changed “his tone from concern to coercion” and began insisting that she was “prowling.”
After she reluctantly got in his patrol car, Menocal drove her in the opposite direction from the gym to a deserted alley near a strip club and forced her to perform oral sex.
“At some point while she was in the defendant’s car, [the victim], fearing what was going to happen, started the recording feature on her phone and left it on the seat, producing an audio recording of a portion of their encounter,” according to court papers.
Prosecutors said they obtained a copy of the recording. Menocal also forced her to have sexual intercourse, the papers allege.
A few weeks later, prosecutors said, Menocal again picked up the woman in his patrol car, this time taking her to a “remote wooded area” and forcing her to have intercourse.
Had Menocal’s case gone to trial, prosecutors were planning to present evidence of other young women who accused Menocal of sexually assaulting them while on duty. They also planned to call a police academy cadet as a witness who was allegedly impregnated by Menocal while he was working as her instructor.
According to federal court records, Menocal tried to pressure the cadet into having an abortion after he allegedly got her pregnant. His defense attorneys were trying to keep this evidence out of the trial, a decision that had not yet been made by Williams, the federal judge. This story was originally published March 4, 2022 3:00 PM. JAY WEAVER 305-376-3446 Jay Weaver writes about federal crime at the crossroads of South Florida and Latin America. Since joining the Miami Herald in 1999, he’s covered the federal courts nonstop, from Elian’s custody battle to A-Rod’s steroid abuse. He was part of the Herald team that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news on Elian’s seizure by federal agents. He and three Herald colleagues were 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalists for explanatory reporting for a series on gold smuggling between South America and Miami.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article258884733.html#storylink=cpy
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