Whistleblowing ex-NYPD sergeant jailed for 6 months on minor assault charge being housed next to a cop killer
He was once a NYPD whistleblower cop — and is now a Rikers Island inmate.
Former NYPD Sgt. Steven Lee, who helped expose the karaoke-bar corruption scandal in a Queens precinct a decade ago, was found guilty of two counts of misdemeanor assault on May 14 for an off-duty brawl at a Chelsea nightclub in 2021.
A judge sentenced him to six months in the infamous jail — where he is being housed next to a cop killer and a drug dealer who beheaded a man.
“On one side I have the killer in Police Officer [Jonathan] Diller’s killing,” Lee told The Post in a phone call from the lockup Thursday.
“There’s also the drug dealer who beheaded a man right here. Why am I here for assault 3?
“If I wasn’t who I am, things would have gone in a different direction.”
Lee admitted to striking a man during the melee, but the man wasn’t badly injured, he said.
He argued that he was protecting a woman who was being sexually assaulted.
Another person in his group severely injured someone in the brawl and was also charged.
He said investigators looked through his phone and found a text message from him saying the victim “touched some girl and deserved to get punched out.”
“They grabbed her breast and they grabbed her ass,” Lee said of the opposing group in the brawl.
“The boyfriend knocked them out. It wasn’t even me.”
The people who arrested Lee on assault charges the night of the fight were some of the same officers he previously helped investigate, including a detective he arrested, he said.
Lee is in solitary confinement at Rikers to protect him as a former cop, ironically next to the two hardened criminals.
They seem to like him, he said.
“The cop killer and the guy who allegedly decapitated the drug dealer, they were friendly with me,” said Lee, who was fired by the NYPD after a department trial for the fight.
“They were sympathetic to me because I’m fighting the system.They were like, ‘You’re one of the good guys.’”
Lee was referring to Nicholas McGee, who is in jail awaiting trial on charges of murder, robbery and concealment of a human corpse in the death of 40-year-old Kawsheen Gelzer; and Guy Rivera, who is accused of shooting Diller to death in Queens on March 25.
All are in the jail’s West Facility, which is the Department of Corrections’ Communicable Disease Unit that is also used to house individual detainees.
All along, Lee has claimed that the criminal justice system is retaliating against him for his whistleblowing.
“I was exposing IAB,” he said.
“IAB is nothing but smoke and mirrors and damage control.”
Lee also committed the cardinal sin of talking to the media about the corruption without permission and went on a podcast in 2020, he said.
IAB also opened a probe about the podcast.
“When I did the podcast, they really came down on me and they really wanted to fire me,” he said.
“So when this incident happened they were all over it.”
Lee has a toddler son with autism and said he hopes to get home soon.
“I hate that I can’t be there to help him,” he said.
His wife declined to comment.
Lee’s jail sentence is “insane,” said attorney Peter Brill, who represented him in his department trial.
“Who goes to jail on a first time misdemeanor offense who was a police officer for 18 years,” he said.
“I know the judge may have been pissed that he didn’t show any remorse but does that equate to six months in jail? I think NYC is the only place you get treated worse when you’re a cop.”
