A former police officer in Tennessee will spend the next two decades behind bars after he admitted to assaulting one woman and sexually assaulting three others between 2015 and 2018 while in uniform, according to federal prosecutors.
Desmond Logan, who previously worked for the Chattanooga Police Department, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Wednesday — the maximum sentence allowed under the law, prosecutors said in a news release. The 35-year-old will also have to register as a sex offender.
“A long sentence will hopefully deter the defendant from ever committing such crimes again, but in the meantime, the longer the defendant is in custody, the longer the public will be safe from him,” prosecutors said in court filings.
Logan was charged in two separate incidents in 2016 and 2018, according to Wednesday’s news release.
The first occurred on Jan. 2, 2016, when Logan was working security detail at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Prosecutors said he asked a woman for a ride to his car, then directed her instead to an empty parking lot where he reportedly pressed his Taser against her leg.
Logan prevented her from getting out of the car, “making (the victim) believe that he was going to rape and possibly kill her,” according to court filings. Prosecutors said he eventually let her go.
“He didn’t rape me but he teased and terrified me and I know I am deeply affected by this,” the woman said later in a letter to the court.
The second crime occurred more than two years later on June 12, 2018, when Logan reportedly arrested a woman, then drove her in his squad car to “an empty and isolated parking lot” where he sexually assaulted her, according to Wednesday’s news release.
Logan pleaded guilty two counts of depriving civil rights in September 2019.
As part of his plea deal, prosecutors said Logan also admitted to sexual assaulting two other women he arrested in 2015 and 2016. One of their rape kits went untested until the 2018 incident was reported to law enforcement, according to court filings.
Prosecutors called it “a pattern of predatory behavior” in a sentencing request filed earlier this month.
“He drove to secluded locations to avoid detection, and he chose victims whom he thought no one would believe, essentially creating situations where it would be his victim’s word against his, should any victim prove brave enough to report his criminal conduct,” court filings state. “It is for these very reasons that the defendant escaped accountability for so long.”
Prosecutors had pushed for a minimum of 17 years in prison for Logan, citing a fifth victim whose allegations came to light after he pleaded guilty.
The woman told law enforcement she had stayed the night on Logan’s couch with her then-boyfriend after a night out in 2015, according to court filings. Her boyfriend left early for work, and prosecutors said she awoke to Logan raping her.
She didn’t report it.
“I worried that no one would believe me, or people would think I was somehow to blame and that I was screwing up a good man’s life,” she wrote in a victim impact statement submitted to the court. “He was engaged at the time, and I honestly worried that I would be perceived as the cause of this.”
The woman has since become a police officer herself and said she lives with “a deep sense of guilt.”
“I am always stuck wondering if I had (reported him), would he have stopped, and could I have prevented others from being assaulted,” she wrote.
Logan’s defense attorneys requested he be sentenced to 13 and a half years in prison, citing his willingness to accept “responsibility for his actions.”
“He has lost his job and the ability to work in law enforcement,” they said in court filings. “He will be a convicted felon, not allowed to possess a firearm or ammunition, not allowed to vote and all the other loss of rights that attended that classification. He will also be on the sex offender registry for life. His young children (daughter age 9 and stepson age 9) will have become emancipated adults by the time he is released.”
A judge disagreed with both assessments, sentencing Logan instead at the top end of sentencing guidelines — 10 years for each count — in addition to three years of supervised release, according to court filings.
But it won’t be enough for one of his victims.
“I can’t imagine what kind of sentence or punishment could ever fix what is wrong with him,” she wrote in her impact statement. “I’d love to believe that he could be rehabilitated with counseling, but I don’t see that as the fix for him. He is a predator in a uniform, and I don’t know how he can even sleep at night.”
– Miami Herald
