Infamous ex-NYPD cop Justin Volpe, who sodomized club-goer Abner Louima with a broken broomstick in 1997, told The Post on Tuesday that he has “nothing but love for” his victim.
In Volpe’s first public comments since his early release from federal prison this week, the 51-year-old disgraced officer said, “I wish everybody well that was involved with my case.
“I have nothing but love in my heart for New York City and everybody in my case involved, especially Mr. Louima,” Volpe said as he stood outside his home in Fresh Kills, Staten Island.
“I wish us all peace,” he continued. “I just want to rebuild my life at the pace that I’m able to. God bless everyone.”
Volpe spent 24 years behind bars after his 1999 confession that he abused and sexually assaulted Louima, then 30, in a 70th Precinct bathroom during an arrest two years earlier — a stomach-churning attack that exploded on front pages across the country.
The Haitian immigrant, who Volpe thought hit him during a street melee, was handcuffed at the time and later needed several surgeries because his rectum and bladder were perforated from the heinous assault.
Volpe still had six years on his sentence, but the Bureau of Prisons decided to cut him loose under the First Step Act, a Trump-era law that grants early release to some federal offenders at least partly to ease prison populations, according to a law-enforcement source.
This week, Volpe was transferred from a lockup in Sandstone, Minn., to “community confinement” in New York, according to the bureau.
Volpe confirmed Tuesday he is currently living at a halfway house.
He originally sought compassionate release two years ago citing COVID-19 concerns after he caught the coronavirus behind bars, but a judge denied his request.
The Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office had bitterly fought the request, calling Volpe’s broomstick assault “one of the most heinous crimes in New York City’s history.”
New York City lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who reps Louima, told The Post on Tuesday, “While I believe [Volpe] should have served his full sentence, let the message still go out to police officers all over this country that if you do what he did you will spend a very long time in jail.”
Volpe arrested Louima on Aug. 9, 1997, after claiming Louima hit him as the cop and other officers tried to break up a raucous gathering outside a club on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
Inside the stationhouse later, Volpe assaulted Louima in what his sentencing judge would later call a “barbarous misuse of power.”
Halfway through his trial, Volpe reversed course, pleaded guilty and outright admitted to battery and sexual abuse.
Louima received an $8.75 million settlement from the city in 2001.
Additional reporting by Priscilla DeGregory