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2 Ex-NYPD Officers Fired After Louima Case Sue for their Jobs back

NEW YORK -- Two former police officers, denied reinstatement after their convictions were overturned in a police torture case, petitioned Friday to get their jobs back.

Thomas Bruder, 43, and Thomas Wiese, 42, say in papers filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected their reinstatement applications in July on improper grounds. The two were convicted of obstructing an investigation in the 1997 attack on Haitian immigrant Abner Louima.

When their convictions were overturned in 2002, the appeals court suggested evidence would have supported convictions for violating other statutes -- such as giving false information to federal investigators -- had those offenses been charged.

The court papers say Kelly improperly speculated about whether they would have been convicted on those other statues.

The two are asking for their jobs back along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay from March 6, 2000, the date they were fired.

Kate Ahlers, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, said city attorneys had not seen the officers' lawsuit and she could not comment.

Former officer Justin Volpe pleaded guilty to charges of sodomizing Louima with a broomstick, rupturing his bladder and colon, in a police bathroom in Brooklyn on Aug. 9, 1997.

Volpe, who mistakenly thought Louima had punched him outside a nightclub, is serving a 30-year prison sentence.

Bruder and Wiese were fired after they were convicted of conspiracy to obstruct grand a jury investigation of the attack on Louima. A federal appeals court reversed the convictions on Feb. 28, 2002, on grounds of insufficient evidence.

Upon reversal of the convictions, the two applied for reinstatement. They filed a lawsuit in March 2004 after receiving no answer from the police, then withdrew the suit when the department offered them a reinstatement hearing. After the hearing in March 2005, the NYPD's Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Trials Michael Sarner recommended that the two not be rehired.

In 1998 Louima sued for $155 million, and in 2001 the city and police union agreed to pay $8.7 million. After legal fees, Louima was left with about $5.8 million -- the largest settlement ever in a police brutality case in New York.

Louima now lives in Florida.