Gina Mestre, a former NYPD police officer, has been arrested and charged with conspiracy and racketeering for allegedly leaking details of a federal investigation to her boyfriend Andrew Done, a “Shooting Boys” gang leader, and then helping him to escape to the Dominican Republic.
“As alleged, Gina Mestre brazenly exploited his position of public trust to help gang members in their own New York police precinct who were terrorizing the Bronx,” Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a news release.
On November 17, Done pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and admitted to fatally shooting a rival gang member. In February of this year he was sentenced to 35 years in prisonreported Pix11.
master, 33 years old, she was assigned to the 52nd precinct in the Bronx. Prosecutor Williams alleged that the officer became intimately involved with Done, Known as “Horse” who was the recognized leader of the “Shooting Boys”, a gang based in the University Heights area.
The federal prosecutor affirms that since 2017 that gang has committed robberies, drug sales, homicides and arms trafficking. A major initiative to reduce armed violence in the area was underway in 2020.
Mestre was arrested on Tuesday night August 15th and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. if convicted of the racketeering charge. She also faces another 20 years in prison if convicted of a charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, a reference to the grand jury investigation.
Another charge accuses Mestre of accessory to murder in aid of organized crime, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. There is also one count in the indictment for conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Williams said that Mestre helped her boyfriend evade capture for the cold-blooded murder of a rival gang member that was committed in broad daylight on November 5, 2020. The US Attorney’s Office provided surveillance photos of Done fatally shooting that day.
Prosecutors said Mestre identified Done as the shooter and was part of an NYPD team assigned to apprehend him. But they allege that he was secretly communicating with Done during the search, which gave him the opportunity to flee the United States.
At the beginning of that year, according to the accusation, the then official already was leaking information about a federal grand jury investigation to Done and other gang members and warning them of impending police operations.
In March of last year, 10 members of the “Shooting Boys” were charged with multiple federal crimes, including murder. Done was captured in the Dominican Republic several months later and brought back to the US to face a murder charge. about that time Mestre left the NYPD after a nine-year career.
In a similar case, it was reported in April of this year that Alisa Bajraktarevic, an NYPD officer working in the Bronx, was under internal investigation after she allegedly tried to prevent narcotics detectives from arresting her alleged drug-dealing boyfriend.
All charges are mere accusations and those charged are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.