December 5, 2024
Robert Ledogar was a Supervisory Deputy US Marshall for the Eastern District of New York with over thirty years of unblemished military and law enforcement service. In his stellar career, he was involved in the apprehension of El Chapo and many other high-profile cases.
In 2016, Robert was presented with a distasteful situation where a group of subordinate Deputy Marshalls were harassing a female Deputy Marshall who was gay. The harassment included physical assault, sexual harassment, and other unlawful discriminatory conduct by officers who were part of the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force. Ledogar reassigned the Deputy U.S. Marshal from the Task Force for her own safety, supported her in filing complaints, and pressed for an internal investigation of the harassment.
Bob Ledogar ultimately corroborated the Deputy U.S. Marshal’s accounts and detailed the Task Force members’ misconduct during multiple investigatory interviews under oath. Over the next four-and-a-half years, however, Bobby was made the target of at least four Internal Affairs investigations and subjected to a half-dozen interviews, all concerning allegations fabricated by the very officers whose misconduct Bobby had exposed when defending and supporting this female Deputy U.S. Marshal.
The baselessness of these allegations was patently obvious and known to the agency. The first three investigations were ultimately closed as the allegations were found to be unsubstantiated. Yet the agency made it its mission to search relentlessly for a pretext and otherwise to punish Bobby, whose vocal defense of a colleague and public opposition to misconduct had brought negative publicity to the Task Force and to the agency.
Throughout these investigations, the agency recycled similar baseless allegations, including some already declared to be unsubstantiated, and bombarded Bobby with dehumanizing and inflammatory questions at nearly every interview. The agency ultimately terminated Bobby from service just two months shy of his eligibility for retirement.
In August 2021, with the assistance of the NPDF, Ledogar finally won his appeal with the US Marshall Service and was awarded his pension.