A New York police officer who complained for months about receiving menacing text messages from her colleagues was arrested after investigators alleged she’d been the one sending them all along.
Emily Hirshowitz, 36, of the Ossining Police Department, was charged at the Westchester District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday with four counts of third-degree falsely reporting an incident, along with three counts of first-degree filing a false instrument.
The latter is a felony which accuses her of filing a report with the intention of defrauding.
Beginning in May of 2022, Hirshowitz filed a report to the DA’s office that she was receiving anonymous threatening text messages from multiple numbers.
She claimed that “a fellow police officer or multiple police officers at my department are involved,” according to court documents obtained by The Journal News.
In July and then in August she complained again, and gave investigators screengrabs showing long expletive-filled messages urging her to commit suicide and calling her “useless,” a “dumb [expletive],” and a “reject.”
Police and local officials were so alarmed by what was described as the messages’ “increasingly threatening content,” that they reached out to the DA to investigate further, before Hirshowitz said she wanted to drop the complaint on August 12.
Her concerned superiors were undeterred, however, and on August 23 police Chief Kevin Sylvester called a department-wide meeting to discuss the messages.
The Ossining mayor along with other local officials were invited to attend, according to The Journal News.
But investigators reportedly were quick to suspect Hirshowitz, and by October issued a search warrant of her phone and digital accounts.
Prosecutors said the evidence quickly indicated she was in charge of several of the phone numbers that the menacing messages had come from, and that she’d likely sent them to herself.
Following her charges last week, Hirshowitz was suspended with pay.
The criminal complaint noted that somebody known to the DA’s office appeared to have sent three of the text messages, though did not note who.
Former Ossining police officer Louis Rinaldi, who resigned in the spring over separate disciplinary charges, has come up as a possible accomplice to Hirshowitz.
Rinaldi was reportedly brought up several times throughout the investigation into the messages, and his lawyer, Michael Santangelo, said the former officer was the subject of an investigation, according to The Journal News.
Hirshowitz joined the Ossining Police Department in 2016, and in 2018 was named the employee of the year by the local Rotary Club branch.
“There’s a lot of mystery and confusion surrounding the allegations in this case and we’ll evaluate as we learn more,” said her attorney, Paul DerOhannesian.
She is due to appear at the White Plains City Court on July 12.
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