NYPD officer: Rape accuser was 'flirty'

In a dramatic court appearance, an NYPD officer charged with participating in the rape of an intoxicated fashion designer testified Friday that she was "flirty," but said he fell asleep watching TV on her couch while his partner allegedly had sex with the passed-out woman.

Officer Franklin Mata also tried to explain why he and partner Kenneth Moreno were caught by a surveillance camera re-entering the drunk 29-year-old woman's East Village apartment house for three post-midnight visits after helping her inside from a cab. He said that she wanted them to return.

"She basically asked that we come back and check up on her throughout the night," Mata testified. "She told us that we could take her keys."

But under a withering cross examination, a tense Mata revealed that his partner made a phony 911 call so the duo could be dispatched back to her neighborhood, and admitted that it was an "emotional" bond -- rather than health concerns -- that drew them back.

"She and Officer Moreno were building a rapport," Mata said. "They were talking, getting to know each other, building a relationship."

"Building a relationship with a woman who was puking in the bathroom every time you visited?" blurted prosecutor Coleen Balbert, whose cross-examination resumes next week.

Mata, 29, and Moreno, 43, are charged with rape, burglary and official misconduct in the Dec. 7, 2008, incident for allegedly taking advantage of the woman. She has testified that she blacked out in a cab after a day of heavy drinking to celebrate a promotion at The Gap, and was incapacitated throughout the episode except for flashes of memory.

Testimony has focused on Moreno as the one who actually had sex with the unconscious accuser. He was later secretly recorded telling the woman that he used a condom, but denies having sex on the same tape. He has not testified, but his lawyer has said that no sex occurred.

Police officials have described the alleged conduct as a betrayal of their most basic duty to protect the public, and the case has garnered major press attention. Mata's appearance drew a capacity crowd to State Supreme Court in Manhattan when word spread that he was taking the stand.

On a critical, legal point, he insisted that throughout the four post-midnight encounters the woman appeared to him to be conscious, walking and talking. The rape charge is based on the prosecution claim that the woman was physically incapable of consenting.

Mata said no sex occurred during the first three visits; he heard Moreno talking about his own history of overcoming alcoholism while the woman retched at her toilet. On the fourth visit, around 5 a.m., he said, he sat down on the accuser's living room couch while Moreno was in the bathroom with the woman.

Mata said he had dozed off when Morena woke him and told him it was time to go.