Ex-NYPD cop tipped off gang leader boyfriend to probe, helped him flee country: Feds
A former New York City police officer living in Yorktown allegedly tipped off her gang-leader boyfriend about a grand jury investigation and helped him flee the country after he had murdered a rival gang member in the Bronx, according to a federal indictment.
Gina Mestre was part of the 52nd Precinct’s Public Safety Unit in 2020 and involved in an "intimate relationship" with Andrew “Caballo” Done when she started providing him with information about the federal probe into his gang, the Shooting Boys, according to the indictment. Late that summer, Mestre allegedly provided the name of a witness who was then beaten up to intimidate him from cooperating.
And on Nov. 5 that year, while part of the manhunt for Done after he had fatally shot the rival gang member, Angel Barreiro, as the victim sat in a car on Cromwell Avenue hours earlier, Mestre allegedly sent to his phone a copy of the surveillance video police obtained of the shooting. She continued to tip him off about the progress of the murder investigation in the ensuing weeks, allowing him to flee to the Dominican Republic.
Mestre, 33, was arrested Tuesday night and appeared Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, where she pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct justice, conspiracy to obstruct a federal grand jury investigation and accessory to murder after the fact.
She was released on $250,000 bond. The racketeering and grand jury obstruction charges are the most serious and carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison. Her lawyer, Matthew Kluger, declined to comment.
“As alleged, Gina Mestre shamelessly exploited her position of public trust to assist gang members in her own NYPD precinct that were terrorizing the Bronx by committing robberies, murders, drug trafficking and other acts of violence,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “The defendant’s alleged conduct violates the oath she swore to protect the public – as well as her fellow NYPD officers – from the type of criminal activity she helped the gang commit.”
Done and nine other members of the Shooting Boys were indicted last year. He was returned from the Dominican Republic and pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced in February to 35 years in federal prison. But he has appealed the sentence and conviction and appears to want to either withdraw his guilty plea or have his sentence reduced.
In a letter to the sentencing judge last month, Done did not specify what he was seeking but insisted he was forced into the guilty plea and suggested that the killing had been in self-defense because Barreiro had a gun and that he was only a member of the Shooting Boys, not a leader.
Prosecutors responded with details of Done's plea allocution in which he acknowledged killing Barreiro, understood the plea agreement, was satisfied with his lawyers' representation and had not been coerced into pleading guilty.
The judge on Wednesday ruled that he had no authority to act on Done's letter because an appeal is pending.
There was no reference to Mestre in Done's case, although prior to sentencing prosecutors had pointed out that he was surprised to have learned the shooting was caught on surveillance video without saying who he had learned that from.
Mestre worked for the NYPD from 2013 to May 2022. The details of her separation from the department were not immediately available. In the statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, police Commissioner Edward Caban commended NYPD and federal investigators.
“There is no place for corruption of any kind in the NYPD,” Caban said. “The arrest today of a former police officer is built upon the steadfast work of our Internal Affairs Bureau, a team driven to root out such betrayals of public trust.”
Mestre lived in the Bronx until 2019 when she and an NYPD colleague bought the Lakeland Street home where she now lives in the Mohegan Lake section of Yorktown.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ex-NYPD cop tipped off gang leader, helped him flee country: Feds
