Queens County DA Richard Brown–vendetta continues
[Truth To Empower]
After beating two bogus prosecution cases brought by Richard Brown the Queen’ s County District Attorney, Kris Gounden hopes a third case against him –even more preposterous than the earlier two– will be dismissed when the trial continues today, May 15, before Judge Michelle Johnson, in Queens Criminal Court.
As readers of The Black Star News know, Gounden has been the victim of a harassment and retaliation campaign by commanders and officers from the 106 precinct for over 11 years now, resulting in multiple false arrests, and alleged beating by a police officer during which he lost two teeth and hurt his lower back.
In recent months I’ve attended many of the court cases. If I wasn’t there to see some of the proceedings for myself, I would simply not believe what I’m writing. One of the most startling incident as I described in a previous article was when an assistant district attorney named Brian Cox claimed he was handing Gounden a DVD from surveillance video that proved he had switched price tags from a Home Depot store in 2015. When Gounden stepped out of the courtroom, he discovered that the DVD container was empty; later, the same ADA gave him a DVD that contained no data. It was not surprising since Cox had earlier told the Judge Johnson that the DVD had been lost — he later claimed he had found it after Gounden asked the case to be thrown out due to destruction of Brady evidence by the DA.
Cox was firing blanks. Judge Johnson dismissed the Home Depot case on February 22.
It would sound like a comedy skit it weren’t for the fact that the DA is actually trying to lock Gounden up behind bars. Fortunately, there have now been some media coverage, including on WBAI Radio, and it may not be easy for Cox to continue with his shenanigans. Cox later withdrew another concocted case in which the DA –with no evidence or even testimony from the alleged victim– charged Gounden with inappropriate sexual touching of his 23-year old stepdaughter. The DA had never even interviewed the stepdaughter and was simply going on the words on another crooked cop from the 106 precinct who concocted the allegations and prepped the stepdaughter on what to say.
The 106 has been after Gounden since he tangled with neighbors in Howard Beach and with a then New York City Councilmember named Joseph Addabo Jr., who is today a State Senator.
It all started when Gounden purchased what he believed was his dream home — a water-front property with two houses in Howard Beach in 2006. After his family was confronted by a bat-swinging neighbor spewing the N-word, the Goundens –Guyanese immigrants with dark complexion– were provided police protection 24 x 7 for about six months. There was widespread sympathetic media coverage in 2007. The Daily News in an article headlined “Family Haunted by Hate in Queens” quoted a police official saying the hostility against the Goundens was like something from the deep South circa 1950s. At the time Addabo told The Daily News that it was Gounden who had played the race card.
After media coverage died down, the police protection was withdrawn. It was then that the Goundens started experiencing real nightmare, as I’ve written about in previous columns. In 2007, Gounden owned several apartment buildings valued at about $4 million. He had an income of about $30,000 per month. Today, he’s lost all the buildings as a result of hundreds of thousands of dollars in what he claims were fake fines from various city agencies that led to liens against his properties; they were eventually forced into receiverships. Now, Gounden is also on the verge of losing his private Howard Beach property.
An NYPD police officer named James Wilfinger, who’s been having sex with Gounden’s wife since November 2016, has convinced her to sell the property, he tells me. One of the two buildings is under his wife’s name. Recently Gounden –he currently lives with his grandmother because every time he returned to his home officers of the 106 would either arrest him or threaten to beat him, he says– saw one of his cars being hauled away from his Howard Beach property. He claims Wilfinger told his wife to sell it to one of his friends. “Basically they want to make sure that even if I win all the bogus cases, I will have no home to go to and no property,” he told me. “He’s been telling my wife that he will marry her even though he once hurt her during forced sex and she called me for help.”
Gounden has previously written to NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill about Wilfinger as well as to Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has received no response. He also wrote to Eric Schneiderman, who resigned last week as New York Attorney General; he has also written to the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Gounden told detectives from the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau who interviewed him last September that Wilfinger first went to his home in the fall of 2016, fishing for information from his wife about a lawsuit he had filed against the NYPD and deputy inspector Thomas Pasquale for wrongful arrest in 2005. Gounden hired a private investigator and together they followed Wilfinger who took Gounden’s wife to local bars, got her intoxicated, and gave her drugs. The pair started having sex in cars in parking lots; Gounden and the investigator documented many of these encounters with photographs and audio recordings.
Gounden also videotaped Wilfinger in bed with his wife on at least two occasions; he gave a copy of one of the encounters to the IAB detectives. There was a period of several months from late last year to earlier this year when Wilfinger stopped going to Gounden’s property to sleep with his wife; during that period, another officer named Davinder Singh, started living in Gounden’s home with his wife on weekends. Gounden, who has security features in the house has obtained photographs of Singh which he’s shared with The Black Star News.
In the last few months, Wilfinger has returned. Sometimes Wilfinger spends three or four days during the week with Gounden’s wife; while Singh spends the remaining days with her at the Howard Beach home. “It’s obvious that my wife is basically a prisoner being molested by these two psycho cops” Gounden says. Also in the home are: Gounden’s mother in law, and his three children, ages 11, nine, and four. “My kids are traumatized by this whole bizarre situation,” he says.
The NYPD, it seems to me has decided to ignore Gounden’s case and pretend as if both Wilfinger, who is also married with children, and Singh, are having “normal” consensual sexual relations with Gounden’s wife. “This is the only way they can avoid investigation. Who can believe this is normal? My wife never drank or used drugs before she met Wilfinger or Singh,” Gounden says. He says it’s ironic that in this era of #MeToo, the NYPD has turned his wife into a “drug-addicted sex toy” for Wilfinger and Singh.
It’s crazier than crazy.
But there’s even more crazy to the next part of this story.
The case against Gounden before Judge Johnson today involves an incident I previously wrote about. It occurred on February 5, 2018. I’ll recap briefly and link to my previous columns as well. On that day, Gounden was driving from his grandmother’s home to pick up his children from school when a man driving a black BMW rammed into the back of his car when he’d stopped at a stop light. Gounden said when the lights changed and he pulled over, the man cursed at him, drove ahead, parked in the middle of the road, ran back and kicked and punched the right side of his car, leaving a dent which is still visible–and was photographed by The Black Star News.
The location of the incident was near 116-32 117 Street, in Queens.
Gounden’s phone records show that he dialed 911 to report the alleged attack at 2:26 PM. “I told them I was being attacked by a crazed man,” he says. Gounden said he abandoned the trip to pick up his children as he was afraid and drove back to his grandmother’s house. The BMW driver, who had a female passenger videotaping him, followed and kept hitting the rear part of his car, he says. When Gounden pulled into his property, phone records show that he again called 911; this time at 2:34 PM.
Gounden also turned on the recorder on a second cell phone. He has shared a recording with me. He can be heard signing off on the second 911 call and saying responding officers had just arrived at his grandmother’s home. Gounden kept the recorder on the second cell phone running. It captured valuable information for his defense.
In the recording Gounden sounds clearly agitated. He referred to the driver of the BMW, later identified as Joseph Adorno, as “crazy” and tells the officers that he had rammed his car from the rear and attacked it. The officers are then heard talking to Adorno, and to a woman later identified as his wife. The officers are heard telling Gounden that the Adornos claim that it was Gounden who struck Adorno with his car, while he was actually walking. Gounden then fled the scene of the incident, according to what the Adornos told the officers.
Here is the kicker; the officer said the Adornos told him the incident had occurred at a shopping mall in Five Towns and that they had videotaped it. Gounden, sounding incredulous, is heard telling the officer that he had never been to Five Towns that day. He also demands that the purported video the Adorno’s claimed they had –showing him striking Adorno with his car– be played.
The next thing heard on the tape is the two officers telling Gounden to turn around so he could be handcuffed and arrested. Sounding stunned, Gounden asks why he is being arrested. He’s told to comply with orders and he’s arrested. Gounden’s friend and legal advisor, Posr Posr, was also at the scene at the time of the arrest.
Later on that same day, February 5, Joseph Adorno filed a police report, signed by one of the arresting officers, Carlos A. Bello. Here’s what’s interesting about the report: Adorno still claims Gounden struck him with his vehicle, but this time, he writes that the incident happened, not in front of a mall in Five Towns, but at 116-32 117 Street, which is exactly the location where Gounden said Adorno attacked him and from where he made his first 911 call.
Not only has Adorno changed the scene of his own version of what he alleged happened, but Officer Bello allowed the false statement into the police report by signing it.
Why would Bello do such a thing? Obviously, neither he nor Adorno was aware that Gounden had a recorder from his second cell phone running at the time of his arrest. It had captured Bello’s voice, telling Gounden, that Joseph Adorno and his wife told him what they claim happened had occurred at Five Towns. “Had it not been for the recording it would be my words against theirs,” Gounden says.
Gounden believes Adorno was a police officer who was off duty. The NYPD’s office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information (DCPI) did not respond to my question when I asked whether Adorno was indeed a police officer.
But what about the two 911 calls? Even if Officer Bello wanted to work with Adorno to frame Gounden wouldn’t the 911 calls undermine their plot?
Well surprise. Not only did the 106 precinct refuse to take a statement of his version of the events of February 5, 2018, when Gounden went in person to the precinct with a witness, the NYPD has refused to provide him with copies of his two 911 calls. His FOIL demand for the transcripts and audio of the two calls was also denied.
Separately, the NYPD also denied The Black Star News’ FOIL demand for the audio and transcripts of Gounden’s 911 calls, claiming releasing them would: amount to an invasion of privacy; jeopardize people’s lives; and, interfere with an investigation.
Meanwhile, Adorno filed a claim with Allstate, Gounden’s insurer, claiming Gounden struck him with his car. Gounden has spoken to an Alltstate insurance investigator several times. He also testified before an attorney retained by Allstate on April 10; he gave the attorney and the investigator the account of the February 5 incident as summarized in this column.
Adorno, on the other hand, refused to testify before the Allstate lawyer and asked for an adjournment. “Why would a victim not be eager to testify? Is it not interesting that his insurance claim does not include a medical report from the hospital? This is a false insurance claim based on a false police report which led to another false prosecution,” Gounden says.
Allstate investigator Ryan Foley didn’t respond to a message I sent via e-mail with questions about Adorno’s claim.
When the police came to his grandmother’s home an ambulance showed up. And Adorno, who had chased after him with his BMW and struck his car repeatedly, had walked out of his vehicle under his own power toward the ambulance. He then lay on a stretcher and was driven away. “For all I know, they let him off around the corner and he got back into his BMW,” Gounden says.
Last Thursday I filed a FOIL denial appeal and I copied it to Police Commissioner O’Neill and Mayor de Blasio. In the appeal letter, I said that since the NYPD was denying Gounden, Allstate, and a media outlet copies of the 911 call, it could be construed as an attempt to cover up the truth about the incident of February 5, 2018. In the appeal letter, I said the information would be critical to proving who was lying — Gounden or Adorno. It could also assist in preventing a man who claims he’s the actual victim –Gounden– from being wrongfully convicted.
I received a denial of my appeal via e-mail message on Monday.
I also contacted DA Richard Brown to ask if he had reviewed Gounden’s 911 calls. Spokesperson Ikimulisa Livingston responded that the DA doesn’t comment on pending cases. She also declined to say if Adorno is an NYPD officer.
It will be interesting to see if Adorno produces the video he told Bello he and his wife shot on her cell phone camera showing Gounden hitting Joseph Adorno with his car and then driving off.
I will report to readers later after the court session on Tuesday.
