One day after a New York City police detective was bagged in an online sex sting – the first law enforcement officer caught in the Westchester County District Attorney’s Internet sting – a judge in White Plains gave him one order: Stay off the computer.
Sixteen-year police veteran Michael Lapine was booked August 17 for “attempted disseminating indecent material to minors,” according to the complaint, and it could get him up to four years behind bars if he’s convicted. He is free after posting $50,000 bail and has an August 27 court date.
District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Lapine and the “boy” first met in a Yahoo chat room known as a hangout for younger teens, communicating at least once a week for six months. Pirro also said Lapine’s chat room profile included listing his occupation as “boy hunter.”
Lapine was arrested a day earlier in Hartsdale, where he had gone for a pre-arranged sexual tryst with what he thought might be a fourteen year old boy who turned out to be another investigator. He arrived by train and was promptly arrested, Pirro’s investigators being accompanied by police from nearby Greenburgh and members of the New York Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau.
Prosecutors told the press several computers had been seized from Lapine’s squad room in a police precinct in north Brooklyn, where he’s believed to have taken several sexually-oriented photographs of himself and sent them to the “boy.” Some of the images are said to have shown him behind his police desk and others in his home. Lapine’s car was also seized, turning up a Webcam and two computers.
The detective, a resident of Ronkonkoma on Long Island, refused to talk to the press and, according to one report, showed no emotion and ignored stares, murmurs, and at least one onlooker calling him “pervert.”
