Ex-hero cop free after D.A. drops rape and sex-trafficking charges
Although serious charges were dropped, Richard DeCoatsworth still faces domestic violence trial.
SIXTEEN MONTHS ago, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said ex-cop Richard DeCoatsworth was a pimp who terrorized the two women who worked as his prostitutes.
City prosecutors painted such an ominous picture of the once-hero cop that a judge ordered him held for trial on more than 30 charges. Bail was initially set at a staggering $60 million and later revoked altogether.
Yesterday, DeCoatsworth, 28, after being locked up for 16 months, was released on his own recognizance by Common Pleas Judge Charles Ehrlich. The District Attorney's Office dropped all charges related to the "prostitutes" - Taisha Viera and Samantha Velazquez.
A Daily News call to James Carpenter, chief of the D.A.'s Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit, was not returned.
His office released a one-paragraph statement: "After an intense follow-up investigation by the District Attorney's Office, it was determined there was not enough evidence to proceed to trial with the trafficking and sex-crime charges against this defendant."
The only charges that remain against DeCoatsworth relate to a May, 9, 2013, domestic-violence incident involving an ex-girlfriend. He is scheduled to be tried on those charges Nov. 3.
So what became of all the talk about DeCoatsworth engaging in rape and human trafficking, of holding women at gunpoint and forcing them to engage in sex acts and to take drugs?
Defense attorney L. George Parry said the District Attorney's Office did not tell him why it dropped the charges, which could have kept his client in prison for the rest of his life.
"I don't know what factors went into the D.A.'s decision to drop the charges. I'm just glad they dropped them," Parry said.
"These are horrible, horrible charges that he's denied from Day One, and at last the charges have been withdrawn. He's free to return to the world and to his family," Parry said.
Had the charges not been dropped, Viera and Velazquez would have been "highly unreliable witnesses," Parry said.
"I don't think the accusers would have survived cross-examination. They contradicted themselves in their statements to the police, they contradicted themselves in their grand-jury testimony and they contradicted each other," Parry said.
Yesterday's court action is the latest twist in the strange saga of the onetime "hero" cop.
In September 2007, the 21-year-old rookie cop made headlines for surviving a shotgun blast to the face and helping to catch the gunman during a traffic stop.
DeCoatsworth was soon transferred to the Police Department's elite Highway Patrol, and in 2009 was invited to sit next to first lady Michelle Obama during President Obama's first address to Congress.
But he abruptly retired in December 2011. By then, the city had settled a series of lawsuits - the largest for $1.5 million - in which DeCoatsworth was accused of misconduct.
His former attorney, A. Charles Peruto Jr., said in March that DeCoatsworth's problems stemmed from his becoming addicted to pain medication and then to heroin after being shot in 2007.
DeCoatsworth apparently hit rock bottom in May 2013 when SWAT officers stormed his home on Salmon Street near Lehigh Avenue, to arrest him on the sex-trafficking and assault charges.
In February, he agreed to plead guilty to simple assault, drug possession and promoting prostitution in exchange for the mountain of other charges being dismissed. In April, however, DeCoatsworth withdrew his guilty plea and asked to be tried.