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ST. LOUIS COUNTY — A North County Police Cooperative officer was arrested Wednesday on allegations he sexually assaulted a handcuffed man near Normandy High School last week.

Marcellis Blackwell is charged with first-degree sodomy or attempted sodomy. He was in custody Thursday at the ӣ����Ƶ County Justice Center on a $500,000 cash-only bond.

Investigators said Blackwell arrested a 37-year-old man on Saturday and while driving him to the jail, Blackwell took him to a “secluded area” near Normandy High School. There, police said the officer touched the man “for an extended period of time” while the man was still handcuffed.

The man was then booked and released from jail. He reported the incident to police.

This is the second time in less than a month an officer from the agency has been criminally charged. In mid-May, a former North County Police Cooperative officer was charged with letting his brother beat up a person the corporal had handcuffed during a fight in November.

The department’s spokesman, Maj. Ron Martin, called the new allegations “massively disheartening.”

“But we can reassure the community we expect the members of this law enforcement agency to conduct their duties with diligence, transparency, professionalism and within the law,” Martin wrote in a statement released Thursday.

Still, Martin told the Post-Dispatch, this case and the May case are the only ones in the department’s approximately eight-year history in which an officer was criminally charged in connection to on-duty behavior.

“The only pattern I can tell you that has been established is that we are not going to put up with it, we are not going to sweep anything under the rug,” he said, noting investigators had sought charges within just 72 hours of the man reporting the behavior.

Blackwell, who is in his thirties, has resigned. He worked for the department for just over a year, Martin said. He did not have previous experience in law enforcement when he was hired.

The North County Police Cooperative was established to serve eight municipalities: Dellwood, Pine Lawn, Wellston, Vinita Park, Hanley Hills, Velda Village Hills, Beverly Hills and Uplands Park.