Sunday, February 11, 2007

Bent Blue

"Forced to choose between her oath to protect the city and her ex-con husband, a Brooklyn cop chose her spouse - even as a fellow officer lay bleeding yesterday from a gunshot wound, police sources said.

The double-crossing cop helped her husband and his drunken friend hide from authorities after her husband fired into an unmarked police vehicle, seriously wounding a plainclothes officer, the sources said.

The shooting erupted about 4 a.m., when Rivera, 31, drove the white Acura SUV alongside an unmarked police SUV at Prospect Place and Sixth Ave. in Park Slope, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

Staring into the police vehicle, Rivera allegedly yelled, "You got a beef? You got a beef with me?"

Rivera then leaned across Cedeño and fired two shots, police said.

One bullet went underneath Officer Andrew Suarez's bulletproof vest, hitting him in the armpit and lodging in the back of his neck, just an inch from his spine.

As the 25-year-old Suarez, a member of the 78th Precinct's anti-crime unit, bled behind the steering wheel, a sergeant and two police officers fired 13 shots at Rivera. But he sped away toward the home he shared with his wife, just two blocks away on Saint Marks Ave., police said.

Dozens of cops swarmed the area and nabbed Melendez-Rivera, a 13-year veteran, about 5:45 a.m. as she drove the Acura along Fourth Ave. near Prospect Ave., police said.

When cops pulled her over, she told them she was simply looking for a legal parking spot.

"The car had bullet holes in it and a shattered window," a police source said. "No one was buying her story."

"She started crying," the source added. "She gave up her husband and the friend."

Police found Rivera and Cedeño hiding inside Melendez-Rivera's $1.9 million home, which she inherited from her parents. Holding a snarling pit bull, a pajama-clad Rivera asked, "Is something happening?" when confronted by cops, sources said."

Lowlives. Absolute, unadulterated lowlives. The upside is there is one less crooked cop on the streets.

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