Just a little James Burke background. No wonder he thought he was "untouchable"... apparently, he was for many years.
Specifically, an internal affairs report from 18 years ago shows that then-Sergeant Burke was attached romantically to a convicted prostitute and drug dealer named Lowrita Rickenbacker. All of her multiple arrests had happened in the precinct in which Burke was a supervisor, but he still claimed to internal affairs investigators that he’d had no knowledge of her criminal history.
Suffolk police investigators concluded that, in 1993, then-Sergeant Burke had a months-long relationship with the prostitution and drug dealing convict, and had on one occasion even left her alone in his car with his gun belt and service weapon in the back seat. The internal affairs report, obtained by Newsday, also substantiated that Burke had, at least once, engaged in a sexual act with Rickenbacker in his patrol car.
After internal affairs probed Burke’s relationship with Lowrita Rickenbacker and substantiated it through testimony and lie detector tests of her and then-Sergeant Burke, it is not at all clear that Burke was disciplined.
Instead, in 2000, five years after the probe was completed, Burke was promoted to lieutenant. Then, in 2002, he was named chief of detectives by District Attorney Spota. In 2012, Burke was named Suffolk County police chief.
NEW YORK (PIX11) – A story first broadcast on PIX11 News about corruption charges against the chief of one the country’s largest departments has taken a remarkable new turn. It shows a history of…
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