See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Shavana Abruzzo
Brooklyn Daily
Sadistic cops are a stain on the Finest and a drain on taxpayers, who shelled out nearly $1 billion in the last 10 years — the cost of 1,000 heart transplants — to settle the NYPD’s police brutality claims.
This month alone:
• A teen suspect was caught on video beseeching, “Mister, it was just a cigarette, sir,” as a cop allegedly punched him out, and jeered at his friend, “Do you wanna get f----- up?”
• Two officers were filmed pistol-whipping a 16-year-old perp in the face, as he surrendered with his hands up.
• The Brooklyn district attorney is investigating accusations that a law enforcer stole $1,000 from a man during a stop-and-frisk, then pepper-sprayed him and his sister for complaining.
Police officers are not a separate entity in a free society, says a cop-brutality victim who received the largest verdict ever delivered in a national case 20 years ago, and who told this column that his extensive injuries — including brain damage — destroyed his career as a rising Wall Street attorney.
“Cops are part of the general citizenry, but they have the power of life and death strapped to their hip,” says Bensonhurst resident Gerard Papa, who was called as a witness in the 1993–94 Mollen Commission’s NYPD corruption hearings that found brutality, theft, abuse of authority, and active police criminality characterized the agency’s misconduct.
Former Bronx cop Bernie Cawley — called “The Mechanic” because of his abilities to “tune people up” — testified, “We’d just beat people in general, if they were on the street, hanging around drug locations … it was a show of force … to show who was in charge.”
Papa, who is white, and James Rampersant Jr., who is black, were driving along Bayview Avenue in Coney Island one night in 1986 when a pair of screeching, unmarked cars surrounded them in a menacing circle. Several men in plain clothes leapt out with drawn guns, opening fire without warning, as he and Rampersant ducked under the dashboard. Then the men dragged Papa and Rampersant outside, and beat and kicked them as they lay handcuffed on the ground — shocked, confused, and bleeding.
When Rampersant asked what they had done, a cop put a gun to his head and said, “Shut up, or I’ll blow your head off.”
Both men were slapped with attempted murder and other charges, and spent nearly three days in jail before a grand jury dismissed the case. The undercovers, assigned to the 60th Precinct, shrugged off the assault as a case of mistaken identity and went unpunished, claims Papa, who formed a youth basketball program called the Flames with his proceeds.
The breach of cop-civilian trust was tough to swallow.
“I thought they were hoodlums,” he says. “Turned out they were.”
Next week “Cops gone wild, part two” features witness accounts to arrests gone awry, and a retired officer and an undercover who explain the lawlessness.
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