Suspended Falls Police Officer Ryan Warme will get trials in federal court on charges he engaged in multiple sex crimes, as well as gun and drug law violations, while he was both on and off duty.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Richard Arcara also threw out two of the 11 criminal counts that Warme had faced.

Warme has been accused of violating the civil rights of three women by sexually assaulting or abusing them, using his position as a police officer to extort sexual favors from a Falls prostitute, conspiring to distribute both powdered and crack cocaine, committing federal firearms offenses and failing to arrest a known felon who was in possession of a weapon. His defense team asked for one trial on his so-called sex crimes and a second trial on the gun and drug charges he faces.

Defense attorney Joel Daniels had argued to Arcara his client is facing two cases, not one. Daniels said Warme would testify in his own defense on the sex crimes but invoke his Fifth Amendment rights relating to the gun and drug charges.

In a ruling issued Thursday, Arcara granted the defense request for the separate trials.

“Here, (Warme’s) testimony at trial, if believed by the jury, would establish that each of the (alleged sex crimes) were consensual,” Arcara wrote. “Consent to these acts, if established, would constitute a complete defense to these counts. (Warme’s) testimony about these counts is sufficiently important that he should be allowed to present it to a jury without the risk of waiving his Fifth Amendment rights for the other counts.”

At the same time that Arcara granted the separate trials, he also dismissed one of the so-called “sex counts.” The judge tossed Count Six of the indictment against Warme, which charged he extorted sexual favors from a prostitute.

Daniels had argued that the charge, made under the federal Hobbs Act, which relates to obtaining property through extortion, should be dismissed because “an act of oral sex is not property.”

Arcara agreed, writing, “Count Six may constitute other legal violations, but does not constitute ‘obtaining property’ by extortion within the meaning of the Hobbs Act.”

The chief judge also said the charge needed to be dismissed because it did not show enough of a connection to interstate commerce to give him jurisdiction.

“Count Six does not state that the incident involved a crossing of state lines during its commission or planning,” Arcara wrote. “The government conceded at oral argument that the only evidence that it could offer at trial to satisfy the jurisdictional requirement would be unsubstantiated hearsay statements from the victim to the effect that, sometimes, her prostitution clients tell her that they are visiting Niagara Falls from out of state.”

The judge also dismissed the first count of Warme’s indictment, a public corruption charge, that claimed the police officer deprived the citizens of Niagara Falls of his “honest services.” Prosecutors said Warme committed “wire fraud” by having his police salary deposited in a Texas bank and then using ATMs in the Falls to withdraw cash to purchase crack and powdered cocaine.

However, Arcara found that the charge was “deficient in a critical element of wire fraud.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Bruce expressed some disappointment with Arcara’s decision.

“We will soldier on,” Bruce said. “(The decision) didn’t give us what we wanted, but we’ll get through it.”

The judge scheduled a hearing today to set dates for Warme’s trials.

Contact reporter Rick Pfeiffer at 282-2311, ext. 2252.