An NYPD officer pointed a loaded gun in a female subordinate’s face at 1 Police Plaza in March after subjecting her to incessant sexual harassment, often joined by a supervisor, a bombshell lawsuit filed in Manhattan revealed Monday.
The Manhattan Supreme Court suit against Officer Quilbvio Espinal, 35, a 10-year veteran of the force, filled in details of the cop’s mysterious March 26 arrest on misdemeanor menacing charges, which are being tried by District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.
The incident inside the NYPD’s main headquarters, according to civilian employee Megan Kwan’s suit, occurred after she made a suggestion about a website Espinal was working on that apparently embarrassed the officer. Espinal is assigned to the cybersecurity team in the Information Technology Bureau, where Kwan, a 25-year-old former NYPD intern, was hired on the help desk in November.
Espinal pulled out his department-issued weapon when the director left the room and aimed it directly at Kwan before raising it toward the ceiling, her suit alleges.
Kwan attempted to de-escalate, asking Espinal, “What are you going to do, shoot the ceiling?”, prompting the cop to point it back at her.
Espinal then put the loaded firearm in an unsecured desk drawer in a civilian employee’s work space, where it remained unattended for an hour, according to the suit.
“When he pointed that gun at my face, time stopped. My only thought was that I was going to die at my own desk, and that I would never see the people I love again. I tried to stay calm, tried to defuse it, and then watched him raise it at me a second time. I have never been so certain that my life was about to end,” Kwan said in a statement to the Daily News.
“Since that day, I have not felt safe — not at work, not anywhere,” the statement added. “I still report to the same command that failed to protect me, where I have heard people question what we ‘did’ to provoke him, as if any of this were my fault.”
An NYPD spokesperson declined to comment beyond that Espinal was currently suspended with pay. He was suspended without pay for the first 30 days after his arrest, DCPI said.
Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city Law Department, said the agency was reviewing the case.
Kwan’s suit alleges that for some 18 months before the firearm incident, Espinal and Lt. Jayson Valentin, a former sergeant in the unit where she and Espinal work, had made her life a living hell, with Espinal making sexualized and racist remarks toward her near daily from the moment he was transferred to her workspace in October 2024.
Espinal is described in the lawsuit as “incessantly” making sexualized comments about Kwan being Asian that “became increasingly explicit” and continued on a near-daily basis throughout 2025 and until his arrest this year. The cop put much of his harassment in writing, with more than a dozen texts referenced in the suit — like that he wanted an “Asian girlfriend” and couldn’t wait to have an “Asian wife.”
The officer also sent racist and pornographic video content to Kwan and messages mocking Asian women and deaf women, including a video saying it was desirable to date a deaf woman because “she can’t hear him or yell at him,” the suit details. Kwan is hard of hearing due to bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and relies on hearing aids and lip-reading to communicate.
Kwan repeatedly asked Espinal to cut it out, her suit says, but didn’t report him, feeling powerless.
The suit alleges that Valentin openly laughed at and participated in Espinal’s abuse. Last year, Kwan alleges, he sent her a picture of his genitals on a self-deleting messaging app. The lieutenant is also quoted as saying he “thirsted for the cute deaf Asian girl next door.”
Valentin, a friend of Espinal, worked in the same unit as he and Kwan as a sergeant until October 2025. He has not faced any discipline and could not be reached.
Kwan’s suit says she took a day off work after reporting Espinal and was horrified to return and see her fears about speaking up realized. Valentin tried to pressure her to stonewall Bragg’s office, and another higher-up, Lt. Ming Zheng, was furious the issue hadn’t been handled “in house” — questioning what civilians had done to “provoke” Espinal, the suit says.
In lengthy text messages cited in the suit, Valentin tried to guilt-trip Kwan about Espinal by saying he didn’t deserve to have his career “get destroyed over bullshit” and promising the conduct would stop. On April 23, he told Kwan she “could always decline to prosecute with the DA if you didn’t really want this to go to the full extent,” the suit alleges. The lieutenant told Kwan that as “a rookie Lt on probation who is a mandatory reporter of any allegations of misconduct,” he feared he’d get “dragged in.”
Kwan has continued to cooperate with prosecutors. The DA’s office had no comment.
Kwan’s lawsuit names the NYPD, Espinal, and Valentin as defendants, and alleges she was subjected to sexual harassment, racial harassment, disability-based harassment, hostile work environment, and retaliation. She is seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.
Kwan’s attorney, John Scola, said her claims illuminated a longstanding culture within the NYPD of failing to protect female employees from predatory cops in its ranks.
“A police officer pointed a loaded firearm at a civilian co-worker and remains on the force,” Scola said. “A supervisor sexually harassed that same woman, exposed himself to her, and pressured her to abandon a criminal prosecution, and he has faced no discipline whatsoever.”
