Brickbat: Durham Bully

Former Durham, North Carolina, police officer Rayshawn Taylor was sentenced to three years and one month in prison plus two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a man while on duty. Taylor responded to a welfare check at the victim’s home around 4:30 a.m. After a superior officer left the scene, Taylor frisked the victim and sexually assaulted him for several minutes. He used a translation app on his phone to ask if the victim “liked it” and threatened to arrest him if he told anyone. When the victim’s wife called 911, Taylor returned to the house in uniform, denying everything, but the wife insisted on speaking to a supervisor. The supervisor asked if Taylor had recorded the interaction on his body camera, but Taylor said he didn’t turn the camera on—a violation of department policy—because he didn’t plan to arrest the victim. Investigators later found footage from Taylor’s patrol car that corroborated the victim’s story and evidence that he deleted the translation app from his personal phone.