Edward Núñez, a seven-year veteran of the NYPD, was fired by order of Commissioner Edward Cabán at the close of an internal investigation that determined that he had faked having COVID to extend his vacation in the Dominican Republicaccording to Daily News.
The case began when on a trip to that country in September 2022, Officer Núñez’s wife contracted COVID, as determined by a recently published NYPD departmental trial.
At that time Núñez, who was assigned to The Bronxsaid he had also suffered COVID symptoms, but staff at the clinic where his wife was never gave him a medical test, according to NYPD documents.
When Nunez called the NYPD to report that he had COVID and needed to take sick leave, they told him he needed a positive COVID test result. He looked for and got one at the Dominican clinic, but it belonged to someone else, as the QR code revealed.
When the fraudulent evidence was discovered, The Police Department charged Nunez with criminal possession of a forged instrument. He was also accused of doing false and misleading statements when he was questioned by the Internal Affairs Office about the matter.
At first Núñez insisted that the test results were his, but finally confessed that he never took a COVID test, the documents say. But he insisted that he did have COVID and said that the clinic had agreed with him because his wife had tested positive.
Núñez pleaded guilty to the departmental charges and submitted to the mercy of a departmental court. Last April Deputy Deputy Commissioner of Trials Vanessa Facio-Lince recommended that she be allowed to keep his job, but that he would be fired if he violated further NYPD rules and procedures over the next year.
However, upon taking office, Commissioner Cabán did not agree with that result and ordered Núñez’s dismissal in October. By then, the officer had already left the police department and has not commented to the press since.
In September, Julie DeVuono, a 51-year-old nurse, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering for raising $1.5 million by selling fake vaccine cards during the COVID-19 pandemic on Long Island, NY.
In December 2021, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, decreed that producing or using a false coronavirus vaccination card was a state crime, as well as a federal oneadding another option to prosecute the users and providers of those fraudulent documents.
In the fall that year Several NYC employees were accused of using fake cards to circumvent then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s municipal vaccination mandate, including two high-ranking NYPD police officers who were stripped of their shields and weapons for it.
2024-01-05 18:50:44
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