A woman filed a $1 million lawsuit this week against an embattled Baltimore City police officer alleging battery and assault, claiming he raped her during a search at her boyfriend?s home.
The suit alleges that Jemini Jones, 29, a former member of the city?s disbanded “flex squad,” threatened to arrest the woman in October 2005 and said she would have to engage in sexual activity with him “if she wanted to get out of this.”
Jones has been indicted twice on criminal rape charges in Baltimore Circuit Court.
In the first case, filed in January, he is accused of raping a woman in exchange for her release after she was brought to a police station.
Two other officers who worked with Jones in the flex squad ? Brian Shaffer and Steven Hatley ? are his co-defendants in the first rape case and were also named in the civil suit.
All three were included in their personal capacities and as police officers. The police department itself was not named, but attorney Randall Craig, who represents the woman, suggested that might change.
The woman was by herself at her boyfriend?s home when the three officers ? dressed in plainclothes ? pounded on the door and reported finding a gun in the kitchen when she let them inside, according to the lawsuit.
They allowed her to change her clothes in a bedroom, saying she was headed to the city?s Central Booking facility, the lawsuit says, when Jones put on a condom and raped her.
A spokesman for the Baltimore police department declined to comment on the lawsuit because the case is ongoing.
Warren Brown, an attorney who has represented Jones in the criminal case, could not be reached for comment.
