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| Convicted Felon and Former Greece, NY Police Chief Merritt Rahn |
By Davy V.
Convicted felon and former Greece, NY Police Chief Merritt Rahn was released from the Hudson, N.Y. Correctional facility Wednesday morning.
In 2010, Rahn was convicted of several felonies in connection with covering up for two of his officers, including former Greece, NY Police Sgt. Nick Joseph's hit and run accident in which Joseph, high on cocaine and alcohol rear ended a stalled vehicle.
Inside that vehicle was Alexis Sharpe, who was pregnant.
The impact ruptured Sharpe's placenta and she had to undergo emergency surgery, forcing her to deliver her daughter, Azaria, 14 weeks prematurely.
Azaria spent 93 days in the hospital and suffers ongoing medical problems.
Nick Joseph fled under the cover of darkness immediately after crashing into Sharpe's vehicle.
Joseph was later convicted and sentenced to 3 to 7 years in State prison.
Rahn was found guilty of tampering with public records, hindering a prosecution, falsifying business records, falsely reporting an incident, and two counts of official misconduct in an attempt to cover up the Joseph incident.
He was also found guilty of offering a false instrument for filing in the case of former Greece Police officer Gary Pignato’s background check.
In 2009, Greece Police officer Gary Pignato, also a former Rochester, NY Police officer, who was fired from the RPD, was charged with bribery and coercion, stemming from several traffic stops of women, whom he would try to force into having sex with him in exchange for him letting them off traffic tickets and crimes.
In one case, Pignato responded to a domestic disturbance call where the boyfriend of a young woman had called police.
The woman had been drinking alcohol.
Once Pignato learned the woman was on probation, he bribed the woman by telling her that if she did not have sex with him he would arrest her and she would be in violation of her probation.
Pignato would routinely follow women to their homes and stalk them.
At his sentencing, Pignato told the Judge "I literally placed my life on the line" as an officer and that it's "degrading and demoralizing to be in jail."
Pignato was sentenced 2 to 6 years in New York State Prison.
Rahn served only 28 months of a five year sentence.
He will be on parole supervision until July 2015.
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