Prosecutor: Former 'Hero Cop' mired in drugs and sexual violence

DISTURBING AND dark details of the life of fallen "hero cop" Richard DeCoatsworth emerged yesterday in a packed Common Pleas courtroom where the former lawman was hoping to get his $60 million bail lowered.

Instead, DeCoatsworth, 27, learned that a grand jury had indicted him on charges of rape, sexual assault, intent to possess or distribute drugs, human trafficking, promoting prostitution, witness intimidation and related offenses in a May 16 incident involving two women.

According to a criminal complaint, DeCoatsworth - who survived a shotgun blast to the face as a rookie in 2007 and sat next to first lady Michelle Obama during the 2009 State of the Union address - went to a house on Howard Street near Berks in North Philadelphia on May 16 with two women. They claim the ex-cop forced them at gunpoint to take heroin, that he then raped them both and at some point forced them into prostitution.

DeCoatsworth is now too dangerous to be allowed to walk the streets, Assistant District Attorney Joseph McGlynn told Common Pleas Judge Charles Ehrlich during the bail hearing.

McGlynn said DeCoatsworth is a drugged-out pimp with a thing for guns - three of which SWAT officers found the night they stormed his home two days after the alleged rapes.

That night, DeCoatsworth appeared to be "about to take his last stand," McGlynn said, noting the loaded shotgun, Glock and revolver in the house and an ashtray on the kitchen table with 40 cigarette butts.

McGlynn presented evidence that a locked box with prescription pills and drug paraphernalia were recovered from the home, and he read a handful of text messages between DeCoatsworth and his associates from May 7 to 17 in which it appeared the former cop was talking about weighing and cutting up drugs for sale and the prostitution trade.

The prosecutor said DeCoatsworth - who resigned from the police force December 2011 - has become a "dangerous and scary person, someone the public needs to be protected from."

To illustrate his point, McGlynn read a text message from DeCoatsworth's former live-in girlfriend, whom he is charged with choking and punching May 9, that read: "I hate you for abusing me for all these years and lying to people about it. . . . As a man, you lost me forever."

DeCoatsworth will face a separate preliminary hearing on charges in that alleged assault.

Ehrlich scheduled another bail hearing for next Monday to give him time to consider evidence.

Defense attorney L. George Parry conceded DeCoatsworth was an "addict" because of pain pills he began taking after getting shot while on duty. But he angrily challenged McGlynn over whether his client was a danger to the public or that he was a pimp.

DeCoatsworth owns his guns legally and one of his accusers was a prostitute when he first solicited her, Parry said.

That woman, he added, made up the rape-pimp story when DeCoatsworth threatened to report her to the Department of Human Services for how she was raising her young son, Parry said.

"That's what the case comes down to: sort of grubby, pathetic stuff that goes on in the lives of drug addicts every day. No rape . . . what you have is him hanging out with a prostitute who was on drugs herself."

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