(Memphis) Imagine getting two choices: going to jail or performing a sexual act.
A man says he was faced with this proposition when a police officer picked him up because of a warrant.
The man says the officer sexually assaulted him and then let him go.
Almost five months later, the accused officer has not been charged with a crime.
“I’ve got to go through this every day of my life,” said the man, who wants to remain anonymous.
It’s not something any man wants to talk about.
That’s why we’re protecting his identity, as well as that of his girlfriend.
“He is an extremely manly guy,” said his girlfriend. “The cop made him do things.”
“He made me perform some sexual acts,” he said.
He says it happened on January 18th as he drove home from his uncle’s house in Orange Mound.
A police officer pulled him over.
“As I was pulled over, the officer asked me a couple questions and I knew I had a warrant,” he said. “He was telling me ‘you know you have a warrant.”
He had an outstanding warrant for assault.
“He placed me in the back of the police car,” he said.
He says the police officer, Brandon Berry, did not take him to jail.
He says Officer Berry picked him up at the corner of Lamar and Semmes, then took him behind a Chinese restaurant and into an alley.
“He came around and let me out of the car and told me to get in the front seat,” he said. “He had his hand on his gun.”
“So, he had his hand on his gun and what was he telling you?” asked Reporter Sabrina Hall.
“Stuff I had to do for me not to go to jail,” he said.
He says the officer made him perform oral sex.
“I did it for a second but I said ‘I can’t do this, man! This aint me! I ain’t feeling to do this man,” he said. “He just sat there and just masturbated himself in the police car and I thought ‘man! This is crazy! I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
He says the officer then drove him back to his car.
“He was just telling me ‘I will see you out here again,” he said.
He says those words and what happened that night haunt him.
The next day he told his girlfriend.
“He was so nervous,” she said. “He thought that I was going to think bad things about him.”
She told her boyfriend to report the officer to Memphis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
“So when you went to report him, you didn`t know his name?” asked Hall.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “But I pointed him out in a line-up.”
He says police had Officer Berry’s photo in the line-up because Berry had been accused of similar things before.
“He had looked down at my private parts,” said Ryan Milligan.
Five months earlier, a teenager walking home from Airways Middle School said a crossing guard, Officer Berry, tried to get him in his patrol car.
“What was he saying when he was grabbing the steering wheel and licking his lips like that?” asked Hall.
“He was just like ‘how do you get big?’ ‘What do you do?’ ‘Do you want to make some money?” he said.
Milligan reported his story to Internal Affairs but investigators found the teen’s story could not be “proven” so Berry was allowed to continue working as a crossing guard and patrol officer and he able to pull over this man months later.
“That ‘aint right at all,” said the man.
Officer Berry is now on paid leave but no criminal charges have been filed against him
“Like it’s cool. Like you can get away with it because you are the police,” said the man.
Meanwhile, the man says he’s gone to therapy but can’t get that night out of his head.
“He is a completely different person now,” said his girlfriend. “And he didn`t deserve anything like that.”
“I just hope it don`t happen to nobody else,” he said.
When asked about this case, MPD will only say it’s under investigation.
