Executive Summary

This thought-piece takes a scorched-earth position because the underlying conduct deserves one: on-duty sexual conduct by police officers is garbage behavior that has to be ferreted out of the department. It is not “private.” It is not “a lapse.” It is a betrayal of the job—a misuse of taxpayer-funded time, public authority, and operational coverage while other officers are out chasing the radio and risking their lives. When officers divert on-duty time and attention to personal gratification, the community pays twice: first through underserved policing and degraded response capacity, and second through the legal and reputational exposure that follows from predictable misconduct under color.

The legal frame is not complicated, and it is not optional. New York Penal Law § 195.00 is built to punish precisely this type of public-trust abuse. A public servant commits official misconduct when, with intent to obtain a benefit, the servant commits an act “relating to the office” that constitutes an unauthorized exercise of official functions, knowing it is unauthorized, or knowingly refrains from performing a duty imposed by law or clearly inherent in the office. New York defines “benefit” broadly as any gain or advantage. That matters because the “benefit” at issue in on-duty sexual conduct cases is often the most obvious one: sexual opportunity and personal gratification—a private advantage obtained by leveraging public position, public time, or public access.

People v. Moreno is the blueprint for how the charge is established when sexual pursuit is tied to official function. The First Department affirmed official-misconduct convictions where on-duty officers exploited duty-created access and used policing pretext to return to a complainant’s apartment without a legitimate assignment, and the court treated the alleged benefit as the prospect of sexual relations—not mere neglect of duty. Moreno matters because it demolishes the most common excuse: “sex isn’t part of police duties, so it can’t be official misconduct.” The official function is the mechanism—access, entry, authority, pretext, on-duty status—and the sexual objective is the benefit. When the badge is the tool and public function is the cover, the conduct is no longer “personal.” It is criminalizable abuse of office.

This thought-piece also rejects the “consent” deflection that routinely gets used to launder power misuse into harmless conduct. Title VII doctrine makes clear the controlling inquiry in workplace sexual harassment is whether conduct was unwelcome, not whether someone later claims it was “voluntary.” That civil standard is not the same as criminal non-consent, but it exposes why workplace “consent talk” so often operates as camouflage: submission under pressure, fear, or career consequence is not meaningful freedom. Inside a paramilitary organization with rank, assignments, evaluations, and control over overtime and opportunities, “consent” is frequently the first story told and the last one that should be accepted at face value.

This thought-piece draws an uncompromising accountability line. If non-consent is alleged, it is not an HR issue and not a “training moment.” It is a criminal-allegation trigger requiring an immediate, independent criminal investigation and charging consideration under the applicable statutes—because criminal law runs on elements and evidence, and charging decisions belong in the criminal pipeline, not inside the same chain of command whose reputation is at stake. If officers claim it was “consensual,” that still does not sanitize the misconduct. “Consensual” does not excuse on-duty diversion of public resources, misuse of official access, falsification of availability, abandonment of patrol obligations, or the creation of unsafe coverage gaps while colleagues are responding to violence, emergencies, and calls for help.

The operational reality is the moral indictment: every minute an officer is using duty time for personal benefit is a minute someone else is forced to cover a wider area, respond without backup, or absorb risk that should have been shared. That is how people get hurt, how communities get underserved, and how departments lose legitimacy. And the legal exposure is not hypothetical. Conduct under color invites civil-rights litigation, employment litigation, credibility collapse in prosecutions, and a culture of impunity that metastasizes beyond sex into every other form of “I can do what I want because I wear the shield.”

The conclusion is as hard as the premise: on-duty sexual conduct must be treated as a termination-level offense for the participants, and a command-level accountability event for supervisors and managers who tolerate it, ignore it, or fail to maintain controls that prevent it. This is not a matter for quiet counseling. It is a matter of public trust, public safety, and public money. The department cannot claim it is under-resourced, stretched thin, and fighting crime while simultaneously permitting officers to turn patrol time into personal license. If leadership is serious about reform, it starts here: no excuses, no euphemisms, no internal burying—identify it, document it, investigate it, and remove it.

I. The Excuse Culture: “No Charges” as a Get-Out-of-Accountability Card

There is a rot that spreads in organizations when the line officers start treating “no criminal charges” as a legal certificate of innocence. It isn’t. “No charges” is an outcome inside a pipeline—often shaped by proof, leverage, gatekeeping, politics, and institutional self-protection. But the statute does not disappear because the pipeline stalls. In a police department, that excuse culture is especially poisonous because it converts the badge into a shield not just from criminals, but from accountability.

This thought-piece is not written for people who need to be persuaded that on-duty sexual conduct is wrong. It’s written for the ones who pretend the absence of an indictment equals the absence of misconduct. That’s not “law.” That’s a self-serving narrative—one that thrives when the department is allowed to “handle it internally” in ways that minimize exposure, bury paper, and preserve reputations. The result is predictable: a workplace where some members feel entitled to treat taxpayer-funded time and authority like a personal playground.

And the damage is not abstract. It’s operational. While colleagues are chasing the radio—running from call to call, absorbing danger, showing up alone when they shouldn’t have to—others are diverting duty time for private gratification. That is how coverage gaps open up. That is how response capacity collapses. That is how communities get underserved while the department claims it’s stretched thin. This is not merely a “personnel issue.” It is a public safety issue and a public trust issue.

The department’s defenders love to narrow the frame: “It’s two adults,” “it was consensual,” “they’re co-workers,” “no one complained,” “no charges were filed.” None of those phrases resolves the actual accountability question in policing, which is simple: Were officers on duty using public resources and public authority for private advantage? If the answer is yes, it is inexcusable. If the answer is yes and the department tolerates it, then leadership owns it—not as a “culture problem” in the abstract, but as a management failure that produced foreseeable misconduct.

This thought-piece takes a hard line because the conduct demands one. If non-consent is alleged, it is not an HR issue and not a “training moment.” It is a criminal-allegation trigger requiring immediate, independent criminal investigation and charging consideration under the applicable statutes—because criminal law runs on elements and evidence, and charging decisions belong in the criminal pipeline, not inside the same chain of command whose reputation is at stake. If the conduct is claimed to be “consensual,” that does not sanitize it. It simply shifts the question to what the public has every right to demand: Why were officers on duty using the job for personal gain at all, and why did management allow an atmosphere where anyone thought that was acceptable?

II. The Governing Legal Architecture: Official Misconduct as a Public-Trust Crime

The legal theory here is not exotic. It is direct. New York Penal Law § 195.00 criminalizes official misconduct when a public servant, with intent to obtain a benefit (or deprive another of a benefit), either:
(1) commits an act “relating to his office” that constitutes an unauthorized exercise of official functions, knowing that act is unauthorized; or
(2) knowingly refrains from performing a duty imposed by law or clearly inherent in the office. (Penal Law § 195.00(1)–(2).)

This statute is built for what policing too often tries to rebrand as “personal.” It is not a sex statute. It is a power-and-function statute. It asks whether an officer used the office—time, access, authority, function—as the mechanism to obtain a private advantage. It also asks whether duty was abandoned while the public was paying. In other words: it targets the conversion of public position into private license.

The “benefit” concept is where the excuses go to die. New York defines “benefit” broadly as “any gain or advantage” to the beneficiary (including gain to a third person). (Penal Law § 10.00(17).) That definition matters because it demolishes the cheap defense that official misconduct is only about money. Personal advantage counts. Sexual opportunity can count—if it is pursued through unauthorized use of official function.

That is not rhetoric. People v. Moreno is a blueprint for establishing the charge when sexual pursuit is tied to official function. The First Department states the elements the prosecution had to prove: each defendant committed an act “relating to his office” that was an “unauthorized exercise of his official functions,” knew the act was unauthorized, and acted with intent to obtain a benefit. (People v. Moreno, 2012 NY Slip Op 07416.) The court then explains why the conduct related to the office: the officers were in uniform and on duty; their initial contact arose from a 911 response; they acquired the complainant’s personal information and keys in the course of duty; and they used police pretext with others while entering.

Moreno also supplies the doctrinal line that matters most for policing abuse cases: the misconduct was not that entry or assistance is outside policing. The misconduct was that repeated entries occurred without a legitimate assignment—entry performed on the pretext of police function while the real intent was a private advantage. The First Department is explicit: “Entering a building or an apartment therein for the purpose of conducting an investigation or assisting an occupant is an official police function,” and making such an entry on that pretext when the actual intent is to obtain a personal benefit “would constitute official misconduct.” That is the law’s answer to the “not in the job description” crowd: the official function is the vehicle; the personal objective is the benefit; the unauthorized use is the crime.

Then Moreno says the quiet part out loud about “benefit.” The court notes a misstatement in summation suggesting mere neglect of duty could qualify as a benefit, but it emphasizes the case was clearly tried on a different theory: “the alleged benefit was not neglect of duty, but the prospect of sexual relations with the complainant.” That sentence is the doctrinal stake in the ground. It confirms the framework this thought-piece applies: sexual opportunity can be the “benefit” where the badge and on-duty function are used as the mechanism.

Two points follow, and neither is soft.

First: the “co-worker” label does not cleanse anything. Official misconduct does not require a civilian victim. It requires abuse of office for benefit or abandonment of duty with intent. The question is not “who the other person is.” The question is: what was the officer doing with public time and public authority? (Penal Law § 195.00(1)–(2); Moreno.)

Second: “consensual” is not a firewall. Even if two adults claim the contact was welcome, that claim does not answer whether duty was abandoned, whether official access was exploited, whether availability was misrepresented, whether the stationhouse or patrol environment was used as a private space, or whether police function was deployed as pretext. Moreno shows the law can treat sexual opportunity as the benefit when official function is abused to obtain it. (Moreno)

This is why the hardline policy position is not only morally correct; it is legally coherent. If non-consent is alleged, the matter belongs in the criminal pipeline with evidence preservation and charging consideration. If the conduct is claimed to be “consensual,” the department still has a termination-grade integrity failure on its hands, because the conduct—by definition—required the conversion of public duty into private advantage. And if that conversion was tolerated or predictable, management owns the atmosphere that made officers think they could do it.

III. The Moreno Framework Applied: Why “Co-Workers” and “Consensual” Don’t Save It

The department’s minimization script—“they’re co-workers,” “it was consensual,” “no civilian victim,” “no harm”—is not a defense. It is a dodge. It tries to shift the debate to sexual morality and interpersonal labels, when the actual issue is abuse of office: on-duty function used as a mechanism for personal advantage, and duty abandoned while the public pays.

People v Moreno is the template because it puts the doctrine in plain language and refuses to let officers hide behind “personal” intent. The First Department held the People had to prove an act “relating to [the] office,” an “unauthorized exercise of official functions,” knowledge of unauthorized action, and intent to obtain a benefit. The core lesson is surgical: an act can be an official function in general—entry, investigation, assistance—yet become criminal when done without legitimate assignment and for personal benefit. The court states the doctrinal line directly: entering a building or apartment to investigate or assist is an official police function; making such an entry on the pretext of doing that, while the actual intent is to obtain a personal benefit, constitutes official misconduct.

That framework is why the “consensual” label does not sanitize on-duty sexual conduct. The public-integrity question is not whether the encounter was mutual. It is whether public resources—time, coverage, authority, access—were converted into a private advantage. Moreno makes the “benefit” point explicit: the alleged benefit was not “mere neglect of duty,” but “the prospect of sexual relations.” That sentence matters because it eliminates the last refuge of the excuse-makers: sexual opportunity itself can be the “benefit” when official function is the mechanism.

In the policing environment, the mechanism is typically obvious. On-duty sexual conduct almost always requires some combination of post abandonment, misrepresentation of availability, unauthorized privacy created in a department-controlled space, duty-created access exploited for personal purposes, or official status used to facilitate or conceal what is happening. Those are not “private choices.” They are operational distortions. They are how the job gets converted into a personal-benefit system while other officers are chasing the radio and absorbing the risk that should have been shared.

And “co-workers” doesn’t help. It does not change whether duty was abandoned. It does not change whether the encounter depended on official access, on-duty coverage gaps, or the credibility of the badge. It does not change whether the conduct “relat[ed] to” the office in the Moreno sense—because that phrase is about whether the job supplied the access, setting, pretext, or operational slack that made the misconduct possible.

This thought-piece therefore draws an uncompromising line—two tracks, two consequences—because ambiguity is how this behavior survives.

Track A: Non-consent alleged. Non-consent is not an HR issue and not a “training moment.” It is a criminal-allegation trigger. Evidence must be preserved, internal control of the narrative must be removed, and the matter must be routed into the criminal pipeline for investigation and charging consideration under the applicable statutes. That is not a claim that charges are automatic; it is a demand that the process not be captured by the same chain of command whose reputation is exposed.

Track B: “Consensual” claimed. “Consensual” does not absolve on-duty misuse. It simply confirms the motive was personal advantage—and the question becomes whether officers used official function and on-duty coverage as the mechanism to obtain it. That is Moreno’s logic applied, and it is exactly why “consensual” is not a defense to a public-trust analysis.

Finally, this is not an argument that “everything is a crime.” People v Feerick supplies the guardrail: § 195.00 is not built to criminalize good-faith errors, which is why it requires layered mens rea and a real “benefit” theory—something more than neglect. (People v Feerick, 93 N.Y.2d 433; Moreno.) But where officers knowingly convert official function into private advantage—especially sexual advantage—Moreno demonstrates that the law has a name for it and a mechanism to prove it.

IV. Command Failure Is the Crime Multiplier: Termination for Participants, Accountability for Management

On-duty sexual conduct does not happen in a vacuum. It happens in a managed system—assignments, posts, supervision, availability reporting, patrol patterns, location accountability, radio runs, and the quiet architecture of who is expected to be where, doing what, and when. That is why this conduct is never just about “two people.” It is about whether the organization’s controls exist in reality or only on paper. When officers believe they can use duty time for sexual contact—whether with civilians or with co-workers—what you are looking at is not merely individual misconduct. You are looking at an environment that has taught them, through experience, that consequences are optional.

This is where the department’s public-facing language becomes part of the problem. “Handled internally” is often presented as professionalism, discretion, and maturity. In practice, it frequently functions as reputational triage—containment dressed up as process. The danger is structural: internal handling places evidence creation and evidence interpretation inside the same chain of command whose reputation is exposed by the outcome. That is not a neutral factfinder. It is an interested institution. And when the institution is also responsible for the record—tour charts, radio logs, assignments, timekeeping, unusual occurrence reporting, supervisory visits, and the “availability story”—the risk of selective documentation is built into the system. This is exactly how “no charges” becomes a cultural anesthetic rather than a legal conclusion.

A policing agency cannot credibly treat this conduct as “consensual and private” because the job itself makes it neither. Even where there is no allegation of non-consent, on-duty sexual conduct necessarily involves the conversion of public resources into private advantage. It’s time theft, coverage theft, and function theft. When one officer diverts attention and presence for personal gratification, someone else ends up carrying the load—often unknowingly—by covering a larger area, answering a call alone, responding without the backup that should have been available, or stretching patrol coverage past what safety dictates. That is not a moral argument. It is operational reality. It increases risk to officers who are doing the job and increases harm to communities that are already underserved.

The department’s defenders will try to narrow the question to whether any call went unanswered. That is a dishonest standard because it treats public safety like a lucky outcome rather than a duty. The standard in policing is not “did a tragedy occur.” The standard is whether officers honored the basic premise: when you are on duty, you are available; when the radio calls, you respond; when your partner or another unit needs cover, you move; when the community needs you, you show up. This is why the phrase “chasing the radio” matters: it captures the real job. When colleagues are out chasing the radio and absorbing the danger, the on-duty sexual actor is not just misbehaving—they are exploiting the courage and labor of others as a shield for selfishness.

This is also why the “co-workers” label is irrelevant. Co-workers are not private citizens meeting on their own time in their own space. When they are on duty, every aspect of their encounter is mediated by public employment: where they are allowed to be, what they are supposed to be doing, what resources they control, what access they have, what spaces they can enter, what reports they can file, what excuses they can offer, and what oversight exists to detect deviations. The “co-worker” label doesn’t eliminate the misuse. It just makes the misuse easier to hide, because familiarity breeds cover stories, and cover stories are how abuse survives.

This thought-piece therefore takes an uncompromising disciplinary position: if the facts establish on-duty sexual conduct under color, termination must be the default outcome for the participants. Not “loss of vacation days.” Not a memo. Not a stern conversation. Not a quiet transfer. Termination. Because anything less teaches the wrong lesson: that the department will tolerate the conversion of duty into personal license so long as nobody makes a formal complaint or the conduct doesn’t become a media event. That lesson is lethal to morale for officers who do the job correctly and corrosive to legitimacy in communities that already doubt whether the system takes accountability seriously.

And termination for participants is only half of the required response. The other half is command accountability—because this behavior does not persist unless management allows it to persist. “Atmosphere” is not a vibe; it is a set of operational permissions. It is what supervisors check or don’t check. It is what they demand documentation for or wave away. It is how they respond to rumors, patterns, and obvious anomalies in availability. It is whether they treat patrol as an accountability environment or as a loosely supervised space where officers can disappear. If management’s posture is that they can’t “police the police” in real time, then management is confessing it is not managing at all.

The accountability analysis for management is not complicated. Where did this happen? How could it happen? What controls were in place that should have detected it, and why didn’t they? Was there an absence of supervision, or was there supervision that chose not to see? Did supervisors fail to enforce post integrity and availability? Were officers misreporting their whereabouts or being permitted to go “out of service” without scrutiny? Were there patterns of paired absences, unaccounted gaps, suspiciously synchronized breaks, repeated deviations from patrol routes, or other predictable indicators that any competent supervisor should flag? If the organization can generate discipline when an officer is late, it can generate discipline when an officer abandons duty for personal gratification. If it chooses not to, that is not incapacity—that is tolerance.

This is where the legal exposure explodes. When officers behave under color in ways that are predictably abusive, the department does not just face internal embarrassment. It faces civil litigation, credibility collapse, and long-term institutional damage. Even without importing a single additional legal doctrine, basic reality holds: misconduct under color is fuel for lawsuits, fuel for discovery, fuel for cross-examination, fuel for impeachment, and fuel for public distrust. It infects prosecutions when defense counsel can show officers treat duty and truth like optional concepts. It infects employment law when the workplace is allowed to degrade into a sexualized environment. It infects public policy when leadership claims a resource shortage while simultaneously allowing officers to treat working time like personal time.

Now draw the line clearly and refuse to move it: if non-consent is alleged, the department cannot treat it as an internal personnel matter. It is a criminal-allegation trigger requiring immediate, independent investigation and charging consideration under the applicable statutes. That is not a claim that charges must always be filed; it is a demand that the process stop being captured by the same chain of command that is exposed by the outcome. And it is a demand rooted in the most basic conflict principle: the institution whose reputation is at stake cannot be the final arbiter of the facts.

If “consensual” is claimed, the department does not get to relax. “Consensual” does not erase on-duty misuse; it confirms that the motive was private advantage and that the officers believed they could take it. That belief is itself a leadership indictment. It means the atmosphere is permissive. It means the control environment is weak. It means supervisors have allowed an entitlement culture to grow: the belief that on-duty time is flexible, accountability is negotiable, and personal gratification can be pursued under color without career-ending consequences. That culture is incompatible with policing, full stop.

So the policy conclusion is not a suggestion; it is the minimum response consistent with public service. Terminate the participants. Hold supervisors and managers accountable when controls failed, warnings were ignored, patterns were tolerated, or documentation was manipulated or never created. And treat the conduct as what it is: a conversion of public duty into private benefit that puts colleagues at risk, deprives communities of service, and drags the department into predictable legal catastrophe. The department cannot claim it is building trust while it allows officers to treat the job like a personal license. This is not reform theater. This is baseline integrity.