Markeshia Ricks file photo
Elliott receiving a departmental award in 2016.
Retired former New Haven Police Officer Jeremie Elliott had a years-long sexual relationship with a local high school student starting when she was just 16 — when he was a cop supervising her in the Police Athletic League program — according to a newly released affidavit connected to Elliott’s sexual-assault arrest.
Elliott, now 42, was arrested Thursday on a second-degree sexual assault charge. He was released on a $100,000 bond, and arraigned in state court on Friday. The city’s police department sent out an email press release about his arrest late Friday afternoon; the Independent obtained a redacted copy of the 10-page arrest warrant affidavit for his case on Monday morning.
Elliott worked for the police department from 2008 up until his retirement in 2021. He worked as a school resource officer and with the Police Athletic League during his time with the NHPD, and was once suspended following a separate sexual harassment probe involving a student at the school where he worked as a cop.
According to the recent arrest warrant affidavit, written on Nov. 15 by city police Det. Christopher Boyle, Elliott had sex roughly 20 times with a high school counselor in the police department’s Police Athletic League at the same time that he was assigned as a cop to that extracurricular program.
The affidavit, based primarily on interviews with the student-victim that took place starting in March of this year when she first came forward to the police, states that she was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school when she and Elliott began their sexual relationship in the summer of 2012.
Detectives also interviewed the victim’s ex-boyfriends, friends, and a relative, and reviewed screenshots of more recent Facebook messages between the victim and Elliott’s then-wife, to corroborate the victim’s account.
Elliott turned down an interview with police officers over the course of their monthslong investigation, according to the affidavit. Elliott declined to comment on this case when reached by phone by the Independent on Friday following the police department’s initial press release on the matter.
Here’s what happened, according to Boyle’s affidavit:
The victim came forward to the police department in March to speak up about a sexual relationship she had with Elliott when he was still a cop and she was a high schooler, a counselor in the Police Athletic League (PAL) program, and a member of the police department’s “cadet explorers.”
She said their sexual relationship began in the summer of 2012 when she was roughly 16, and lasted on and off through 2020.
She said they had consensual sex roughly 20 times in a number of locations while she was still a high schooler, including in Elliott’s car while parked off of a side street near Hillhouse High School, in the auditorium at Wilbur Cross High School when the Police Athletic League camp was in session, in her house, in the bathroom of the police academy, and once at the Goffe Street armory.
In her interview with police this year, the victim “reflected on her relationship with J. Elliott and stated she felt ‘disgusted’ and ‘guilty’ about the relationship,” the affidavit reads.
Police also reviewed a letter about therapy that the victim received in 2021 and 2023 that read: “Throughout her episodes of care, client explored sexual and emotional trauma and the visceral physiological, psychological, and emotional impact it has had on her. Client explored a relationship between her and a New Haven police officer at the age of 16 when she was a police explorer. Through further inquiry and exploration, client concluded that the dynamic was inappropriate due to her being a minor and the relationship having a sexual nature.”
The affidavit states the victim was a counselor who supervised the Police Athletic League campers, and Elliott was assigned as an officer to supervise the campers and counselors. The victim was not assigned to the same group as Elliott, but he was in a supervisory position as a police officer. She was also a cadet in the police department’s “explorers” program.
“As an instructor, J. Elliott was responsible for the general welfare of V1 [victim 1] while she enrolled in the police explorers program and PAL camp.”
“The New Haven Police Department takes all allegations of sexual assaults seriously,” Police Chief Karl Jacobson is quoted as saying in Friday’s police press release about Elliott’s arrest.“The city of New Haven deserves police officers who serve and protect and respect their authority. This type of alleged behavior will not be tolerated at the New Haven Police Department.”
Elliott’s arrest for alleged sexual assault follows a 10-day suspension he received in 2017 when he was assigned to work at the alternative high school New Horizons in the Hill. According to an Internal Affairs (IA) investigation that preceded that suspension, Elliott went to an 18-year-old student’s workplace, asked her to come to his house for“a full-body massage,” then used Snapchat to keep asking her out. At the time, Elliott denied having done anything wrong, arguing that it is not “inappropriate for an SRO [school resource officer] to contact a student outside of work as long as nothing inappropriate is said.”