The ex-NYPD cop who brutalized Abner Louima with a broomstick at a Brooklyn precinct in 1997 has been released early from federal prison — despite prosecutors once calling his actions “one of the most heinous crimes in New York City’s history.”
Justin Volpe, now 51, has been transferred from a lockup in Sandstone, Minnesota, to “community confinement” in New York, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to The Post Tuesday.
“Community confinement means the inmate is in either home confinement or a … halfway house,” the spokesman said.
The disgraced ex-cop has served just 24 years of a 30-year sentence for the brutal attack, in which Volpe eventually admitted to sodomizing the innocent and handcuffed victim with a broomstick inside the 70th Precinct in Kensington.
The BOP said it could not elaborate on “reasons for transfer, or specific release plans,” citing “privacy, safety, and security reasons.”
Online records list Volpe as being in New York’s Residential Reentry Management program, which currently includes almost 7,900 inmates in halfway houses — and nearly 6,000 under home confinement.
“I have nothing but love in my heart for New York City and everybody in my case involved, especially Mr. Louima,” Volpe told The Post on Tuesday as he stood outside his family’s home in Fresh Kills, Staten Island.
“I wish us all peace,” he continued. “I just want to rebuild my life at the pace that I’m able to. God bless everyone.”
His victim, Louima, said he has forgiven Volpe — but will never forget what was done to him.
“I’m a Christian. … Of course I’ve forgiven,” Louima, now 56, told The Post on Tuesday.
But “my life has changed in the worst imaginable way,” Louima said. “Of course I still think about my attack. I think about it most of the time.”
As for Volpe’s release, Louima added, “He knows what he did and if he wants to repent, it will be up to him.
“If the justice system wants to release him, they will. Let it be.”
His transfer to “community confinement,” first reported by the Free Lance, comes just two years after he was denied compassionate release while admitting to a judge that he “committed a serious wrong” in one of the most shocking police brutality cases in history.
The Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office had strenuously opposed that bid, calling Volpe’s broomstick assault “one of the most heinous crimes in New York City’s history.”
“His actions were premeditated, brutal and brazen, evincing a clear belief that he was above the law and that his victims’ lives, quite simply, did not matter,” that filing said.
Judge Eugene Nickerson shared similar horror while sentencing Volpe in December 1998.
“Short of intentional murder, one cannot imagine a more barbarous misuse of power,” the judge said at the time.
Louima was arrested after Volpe claimed he had hit him during a confrontation when cops broke up a rowdy party on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Aug. 9, 1997.
After the attack inside the stationhouse, Volpe threatened to kill Louima if he told anyone, then bragged to his fellow officers about the horrific assault.
The trial was halfway over when Volpe decided to plead guilty to battery and sexual abuse of Louima and the assault of another innocent man.
In his plea for release two years ago, Volpe — the son of a late retired NYPD detective and the brother of a cop — said in a handwritten letter that he took “full responsibility and live with the pain” his attack caused.
“For over two decades I have tried to live in a way to make up for it,” he wrote of his time behind bars.
“I do not seek to evade just punishment for my crime. But … it is my family who is being punished more,” he wrote.
Louima needed several surgeries after his rectum and bladder were perforated in the shocking crime.
He received an $8.75 million settlement from the city in 2001.
