NEW SCOTLAND — New Scotland resident Joshua Spratt, 35, and Voorheesville resident Martin Zaloga, 45 — both former police officers — were sentenced on Jan. 7 in Albany County Supreme Court for separate cases of inappropriate contact with a minor.

Spratt, a Watervliet police officer assigned to the high school there as a school resource officer, was sentenced to six months in Albany County’s jail, to be followed by 10 years of felony probation for his guilty plea on Oct. 8, 2015, of one count of third-degree criminal sexual act, a felony, according to a release from the Albany County District Attorney’s Office.

Spratt was charged in July with four counts of a third-degree criminal sexual act, all felonies; two counts of official misconduct, and endangering the welfare of a minor, all misdemeanors. His guilty plea was in full satisfaction of several criminal sexual acts, and a charge of official misconduct, the district attorney’s office said in October.

Between Feb. 14 and April 10, Spratt engaged in four separate sexual acts with a 16-year-old girl in Watervliet and in Menands, the district attorney’s office said.

Watervliet Superintendent Lori S. Caplan told The Enterprise in July that she had reported to the Watervliet police chief, Ronald A. Boisvert Jr., twice rumors of Spratt texting students. Both times, Caplan said, Boisvert assured her that nothing inappropriate had occurred. The Watervliet Police Department, through a public relations firm, said that it turned Spratt’s case over to State Police as soon as officers found out about Spratt’s involvement with the teens.

“All in all, everybody was in agreement that it was an appropriate and just sentence for the nature of the crime,” Spratt’s attorney, Andrew Safranko, told The Enterprise this week.

Safranko said that Spratt spoke eloquently in court at his sentencing.

“He spoke in court and offered his apologies to the Watervliet Police Department for being a disgrace...and to his family,” Safranko said of Spratt. “He looks forward to moving on with his life. He vowed to turn his life around.”

Last summer, Safranko told The Enterprise of Spratt, “He was a dedicated and devoted officer in Watervliet for over 10 years, loved within and without the department. He was a veteran of the National Guard with two deployments — one in the United States at Fort Drum and the other in Iraq. He’s spent his whole life protecting people.”

“He’s very smart, intelligent,” Safranko said this week, “a person who made some mistakes.”

The investigation into Spratt uncovered inappropriate activities of another law enforcement official, Martin Zaloga, of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, the district attorney’s office said. Zaloga was sentenced last week to three years of probation.

Last summer, Zaloga pleaded guilty to one count of endangering the welfare of a child after an investigation revealed his “inappropriate and sexually explicit conversations with a minor,” the district attorney’s office said. Zaloga served as the Albany County STOP-DWI administrator, and had contact with teens and young adults from the county’s Explorer Program.

Calls to Zaloga’s attorney were not returned before press time.