Two policemen executed for Brown/Garner

[I.Can't.Breathe]

NYPD Breaks Into House and Murders/"Executes"/"Assassinates" Unarmed Teen

Ramarley Graham, Unarmed Teen, Unlawfully Shot By New York Police, Lawyer Says
Posted: 02/09/2012 7:51 pm EST Updated: 12/04/2012 4:48 pm EST

The killing of Ramarley Graham, a Bronx teenager, by police has sparked large street protests.

NEW YORK -- A week after police shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old in his grandmother's Bronx apartment, questions continue to swirl around the aggressive police tactics that led to the fatal confrontation.

Ramarley Graham died last Thursday after Richard Haste, 30, a New York police officer, entered his grandmother's apartment and shot Graham in the chest while he attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Graham was unarmed and police did not have a warrant to enter the home.

Graham's death has sparked street protests in Wakefield, a low-income neighborhood with a large African-American and Caribbean immigrant population. "They had no business kicking down the door. They went too far," said Tyrone Harris, 27. "They need to go to jail just like any other citizen."

Jeffrey Emdin, an attorney representing Graham's mother, called the police tactics unlawful. "They illegally entered the home," Emdin said. "They had no right to be inside. They had no right to use force."

Protesters linked the shooting to the NYPD's aggressive street policing program, called "stop-and-frisk," which predominantly targets low-income minority neighborhoods. In 2011, the program stopped and searched more than 500,000 New Yorkers, 85 percent of them black or Latino. The searches contributed to a record number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests last year.

"The public has every reason to question whether this shooting was the product of the NYPD marijuana arrest crusade, or whether it's the product of their hyper-aggressive stop-and-frisk program," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"This isn't just the collateral damage of policing in a big city," Lieberman said. "The NYPD has adopted certain policies that are off the charts."

The NYPD did not respond to several requests for comment. But at a press conference last week, police Commissioner Ray Kelly expressed concern over Graham's death. "At this juncture we see an unarmed person being shot," he said. "That always concerns us."

The Bronx district attorney's office is investigating, with plans to present evidence to a grand jury for potential criminal charges. In the meantime, the shooting officer and his supervisor have been relieved of their weapons and placed on restricted duty, police said.

Whether charges are brought against officers will hinge on details investigators glean about the events surrounding the shooting.

Police officials said that members of a street narcotics squad broadcast over their radios that they saw the butt of a gun in Graham's waistband as he left a convenience store, under observation for suspected drug activity. The young man then fled up the block to his home after two plainclothes officers in an unmarked squad car told him to stop, officials said.

Footage from private surveillance cameras shows Graham walking into his grandmother's apartment building, a three-story home on a residential street.

Police officers, guns drawn, quickly follow and attempt to kick down the front door after finding it locked. In the back of the building, other officers swarm in through a rear apartment. The cameras do not capture what transpired inside, but officers quickly entered Graham's grandmother's apartment on the second floor. They did not have a search warrant.

The large number of officers at the house indicated that Graham wasn't likely to escape and that officers could have waited to obtain a warrant before storming the apartment, said Emdin, the Graham family's attorney.

"They can't take matters into their own hands like this and violate the Constitution," Emdin said.

John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, Ark. who has argued cases involving police searches before the Supreme Court, said a police suspicion that Graham might be carrying an illegal handgun was insufficient justification for entering the home without a warrant.

"If they thought he had a gun, they should have stopped him on the street and not waited for him to go inside," Hall said. "Any reasonable officer would have known that they needed a warrant to get into the house."

The most crucial question facing Haste, the shooting officer, will surround his actions inside the apartment.

Haste's partner told investigators that Haste identified himself as a police officer, told Graham to "show his hands" and then yelled "gun, gun" before firing, Kelly said.

But Graham's grandmother maintains that officers did not announce their presence entering her home and that Haste did not say anything to Graham before shooting him, Emdin said.

"I asked her if they said 'police' when they entered," Emdin said. "She says 100 percent no."

Emdin also questioned an initial police account describing the shooting. In statements to reporters the day of Graham's death, chief NYPD spokesman Paul J. Browne said that Graham "struggled" with Haste in the bathroom before the fatal shot.

But at a press conference the next day, Kelly, the NYPD commissioner, answered 'no' when asked whether investigators still believed a struggle had taken place.

"Who told them that? Why did they retract that one day later?" Emdin said.

The NYPD did not respond to emailed questions regarding department policies on warrantless searches, or inconsistencies in the police account of the shooting.

The New York Daily News, citing an anonymous police source, reported Thursday that Commissioner Kelly recently ordered a "high level review" of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, responsible for the deadly raid.

The officer who shot Graham hadn't been trained in street-level narcotics work or plainclothes work, the paper said.

[I.Can't.Breathe]

NYPD Officers Cheer Teen's Murderer

Ramarley Graham's Father, Franclot Graham, Blasts NYPD Officers For Cheering For Richard Haste (PHOTOS)
Posted: 06/14/2012 2:36 pm EDT Updated: 06/14/2012 2:36 pm EDT

The father of Ramarley Graham, the unarmed teen who was shot and killed by NYPD officer Richard Haste in February, expressed his disappointment and anger after fellow officers applauded in Haste's support outside a Bronx courtroom on Wednesday.

Franclot Graham told DNAinfo, "It just goes to show they’re all part of the same thing. They were cheering him on for killing someone."

After Haste posted his $50,000 bail on Wednesday, Graham's wife Constance Malcolm similarly said, "That's how they work. You see it everyday." An attorney for the Graham family further denounced the insensitive display and said, "There is nothing to cheer here. A young man lost his life, and that is the man who took that life. It puts salt in the wounds."

Following intense anti-NYPD sentiment over the incident and the national uproar sparked by the tragic Trayvon Martin shooting, Haste was indicted on manslaughter charges. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

As Haste exited the courtroom on Wednesday, NYPD colleagues cheered in support, while demonstrators slammed the NYPD chanting, "NYPD, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?"

Haste's indictment marks the first time an NYPD officer has faced criminal charges in a fatal shooting since 2006's Sean Bell killing, in which Bell was celebrating his Bachelor party the night before his wedding when former detective Gescard Isnora and three other officers fired 50 shots at Bell and friends.

Although Isnora claims he overheard one of the men say, "Go get my gun," it was later revealed all men were unarmed.

[I.Can't.Breathe]

Pig-Semen Sucking Judge Lets Killer Cop Off Hook

Ramarley Graham Case: Judge Tosses Indictment Against Richard Haste, NYPD Cop Who Killed Bronx Teen
Posted: 05/15/2013 12:06 pm EDT Updated: 05/15/2013 12:17 pm EDT RAMARLEY GRAHAM

A Bronx judge Wednesday tossed out an indictment against an NYPD cop who shot and killed a Bronx teen.

ABC reports the judge said an assistant district attorney made an accidental mistake when presenting the manslaughter charges against Officer Richard Haste to the grand jury in the death of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham.

"This is an outrageous miscarriage of justice and an insult to the family and supporters of Ramarley Graham," Reverend Al Sharpton said in a statement. "We demand that a new Grand Jury is convened immediately and that the case is re-presented. We will be rallying and planning direct action at National Action Network’s Saturday action rally. The family will be present."

And Frank Graham, father of the slain teen, said they'd keep fighting for justice.

“If it means going back to the grand jury or if we have to ask the federal court to deal with this case; we are going to keep fighting no matter what,” he said in a statement. “Where ever it leads us we will go there. We will never stop until justice is served in this case, until Richard Haste goes to prison for murdering our son. If we start over, we will start stronger!”

According to ABC, prosecutors will get another chance to present the case to a grand jury.

In February of 2012, Haste and his partner followed Graham into his grandmother's apartment where Graham was attempting to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Haste fatally shot Graham, who was unarmed, in the chest. The officers did not have a warrant to be inside the home.

Haste later turned himself in on manslaughter charges, to which he plead not guilty.

Last week Judge Steven L. Barrett expressed concern that the Bronx DA's office had erroneously told the grand jury, who voted to indict Haste, to disregard evidence that the officer received a warning from other officers that Graham was armed.

No weapon was ever uncovered from the scene.

Graham's death increased already fraught tensions between the NYPD and the Bronx black community. In the weeks after he died, demonstrators gathered outside the 47th precinct and chanted, "NYPD: KKK!" Bronx black community.

In the weeks after he died, demonstrators gathered outside the 47th precinct and chanted, "NYPD: KKK!"

[I.Can't.Breathe]

Video: NYPD Cop Punches Teen For Smoking Cigarette; Teen Suffers Brain Damage

VIDEO: Cop’s knockout hit that family says gave teen brain damage
BY DANIELLE FURFARO
The Brooklyn Paper
October 10, 2014 / Brooklyn news / Clinton Hill

A police officer apparently knocked out a Clinton Hill teen with one blow after stopping him for smoking a cigarette, hitting him so hard he now has neurological problems, according to the boy’s family.

Lawyers for Marcel Hamer say he was walking home from a store down Gates Avenue with friends near Waverly Avenue around 3:30 pm on June 4, when the plainclothes cop jumped out of a blue van and accused him of smoking marijuana. He and his friends started to run, then stopped, Hamer told a registered nurse at Brooklyn Hospital Center. The cop caught up to him, pushed him to the ground, and Hamer hit his left arm on a planter rail, after which he couldn’t move it, he said, according to medical records.

A video of the incident picks up with Hamer lying in the gutter, pleading with the officer to lay off as the cop holds him by the right hand, which according to Hamer’s account in medical records is handcuffed. The undercover orders, “Turn around.”

“Mister, it was just a cigarette, sir,” Hamer says, without rolling over.

Teens, apparently friends of Hamer’s, hover nearby and the officer turns to one, still holding Hamer, and threatens him.

“Do you wanna get f----- up?” the cop says.

The moment of the apparent knockout blow is partially obscured in the footage, but the officer appears to punch Hamer in the face with his left hand, prompting protests from Hamer’s friends.

“Yo, you wiling!” one teen says to the officer.

“Yeah, get it on film,” the cop retorts.

The officer then repeats his order for Hamer to “turn around,” but Hamer is lying completely prone.

“You knocked him out!” a female friend yells.

“Wake up, Cello,” another friend says.

A second man, apparently also an undercover officer, runs over and helps the first cop put cuffs on the apparently unconscious teen, and at one point reaches into his back pocket. Hamer lies unmoving in the 45 seconds between the punch and the video’s end.

“You going to jail on that one,” another teen says.

Hamer came to when paramedics were lifting him onto a stretcher and complained of blurred vision, a headache, and being unable to properly move his left arm, medical records show. He was handcuffed in his hospital bed and officers sat beside him during treatment, according to the records.

It is unclear what happened in the moments leading up to the punch, but Hamer’s family is calling for the officer to be criminally prosecuted.

“If what happened on this video was reversed and Marcel assaulted this officer in the same exact manner, Marcel would be prosecuted, and this officer should be prosecuted for what he did,” said attorney James Ross, who is handling the family’s civil suit.

Hamer, now 17, has suffered from headaches, dizziness, and memory loss since the incident, his mom said.

“He is always complaining of headaches and he cannot remember things,” Mary Hamer said. “He used to be pretty sharp, and now I am helping him.”

Retired state Supreme Court judge William Thompson is also a member of the legal team working on the case and said the incident is a symptom of a larger cultural problem in the NYPD.

“It is pervasive now, throughout the department,” said attorney William Thompson. “It is indicative of an attitude in the police department that is, ‘Them against us. Let’s do whatever we want.’ ”

The attorneys declined to release the name of the officer responsible. Hamer was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and pleaded guilty to a violation, according to Ross.

The NYPD would not comment on the incident other than to say that it is under investigation by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

The law firm released the video the same day as another piece of footage surfaced showing officers in Bedford-Stuyvesant punch and pistol-whip an unarmed teen who has his hands raised in surrender. Police arrested the teen for marijuana possession, according to a report by DNAinfo.

On Oct. 2, police Commissioner Bill Bratton vowed to clean up the NYPD at a conference of department commanders.

“We will aggressively seek to get those out of the department who should not be here,” he said, according to reports. “The brutal, the corrupt, the racist, the incompetent.”

Grim gathering: The family of Marcel Hamer, center, says that a police officer stopped him while he was walking down a Clinton Hill street smoking a cigarette in June and knocked him out for no reason. His mom, left, is now suing police with the help of lawyer James Ross, right.

[I.Can't.Breathe]

Video: NYPD Officer Threatens Restaurant Patron With Rape and Sodomy

NYPD Sgt.’s filthy tirade captured in shocking cellphone video
By Kirstan ConleyMay 21, 2012 | 4:00am
Modal Trigger
WATCH: NYPD Sgt.’s filthy tirade captured in shocking cellphone video
WORKING BLUE: Sgt. Lesly Charles spews a disgusting series of insults at a group of citizens in a cellphone video supplied to The Post.
Photo:
WORKING BLUE: Sgt. Lesly Charles spews a disgusting series of insults at a group of citizens in a cellphone video supplied to The Post. (
)

A uniformed NYPD sergeant was caught on video unleashing a vulgar tirade against a group of Brooklyn men — threatening them with his gun even while condoning their criminal behavior, The Post has learned.

Sgt. Lesly Charles even indicated that some criminal activity is apparently OK on his beat — as long as he’s paid proper respect.

“You guys are hustling or whatever, I ain’t got no problem with that. Listen . . . do your thing,” Charles barked during the April 28 diatribe, which is now being investigated by the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board. “But when I come around and I speak, you f–king listen. Tell your boys.”

The surly sergeant apparently was angry over a car that was illegally parked on Ditmas Avenue in the Kensington section.

His rant against the men was recorded on a 20-minute cellphone video obtained exclusively by The Post.

The footage includes Charles berating a young man in the roadway near a silver BMW, telling him: “This is my street. All right? If you got to play tough, that’s your problem . . . I do whatever the f–k I want.”

A short time later, Charles followed the group into the nearby No. 1 Chinese Food restaurant, flanked by two plainclothes cops.

“I have the long d–k. You don’t,” the cop bragged.

“Your pretty face — I like it very much. My d–k will go in your mouth and come out your ear. Don’t f–k with me. All right?”

After the target of his tirade insisted, “I didn’t do anything,” Charles retorted, “Listen to me. When you see me, you look the other way. Tell your boys, I don’t f–k around. All right?”

“I’ll take my gun and put it up your a– and then I’ll call your mother afterwards. You understand that?”

For good measure, the sergeant added: “And I’ll put your s–t in your own mouth.”

Charles added, “I’m here every f–king day. I don’t go home. I have no life. No kids. I do what I do.’’

The 21-year-old man who shot the video — and provided it to The Post on the condition of anonymity — was arrested that night and charged with disorderly conduct, which court records show was for ignoring the cops’ orders to leave.

Police sources said he has been arrested more than 20 times, including for petit larceny and weapons and pot possession.

An NYPD spokeswoman said the department is investigating the incident.
The man’s lawyer, David Zelman, said it was troubling that “there were other cops by [Charles’] side, and they seemed to take it in stride.”

Charles, reached at home yesterday, said, “I’m just doing God’s work. You know I can’t comment . . . Have a blessed day.”

A source close to the sergeant said that in the past, “all efforts at civility failed’’ in dealing with the men. They are known to loiter and play loud music, prompting complaints from local businesses, law-enforcement sources said.

“The sergeant was trying to get the message across in a way they could understand,’’ the source said.

[I.Can't.Breathe]

Brooklyn Police Officers Investigated In Series of Cases For Planting Evidence; Officers Stood to Receive Rewards for Fictitious "Informants"

In Brooklyn Gun Cases, Suspicion Turns to the Police
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORDDEC. 11, 2014

The tip comes from a confidential informer: Someone has a gun. Ten or more minutes later, police officers find a man matching the informer’s detailed description at the reported location. A gun is discovered; an arrest is made.

That narrative describes how Jeffrey Herring was arrested last year by police officers in the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. It also describes the arrests of at least two other men, Eugene Moore and John Hooper, by some of the same officers.

The suspects said the guns were planted by the police.

There were other similarities: Each gun was found in a plastic bag or a handkerchief, with no traces of the suspect’s fingerprints. Prosecutors and the police did not mention a confidential informer until months after the arrests. None of the informers have come forward, even when defense lawyers and judges have requested they appear in court.

Taken individually, the cases seem to be routine examples of differences between the police account of an arrest and that of the person arrested. But taken together, the cases — along with other gun arrests made in the precinct by these officers — suggest a pattern of questionable police conduct and tactics.

Mr. Moore’s case has already been dismissed; a judge questioned the credibility of one of the officers, Detective Gregory Jean-Baptiste, saying he was “extremely evasive” on the witness stand.

Mr. Hooper spent a year in jail awaiting trial, eventually pleading guilty and agreeing to a sentence of time served after the judge in his case called the police version of events “incredible.”

In another example, Lt. Edward Babington, one of the four officers in Mr. Herring’s case, was involved in a federal gun case that was later dismissed and led to a $115,000 settlement. In that case, a federal judge said she believed that the “officers perjured themselves.”

Debora Silberman, a public defender at Brooklyn Defender Services, has been fighting Mr. Herring’s arrest, filing a two-inch-thick motion detailing the problems with his case and the similarities to others.

On Thursday, after inquiries from The New York Times, prosecutors said that they were re-evaluating the case.

Ms. Silberman said she had always believed Mr. Herring. “Nothing in his story has ever changed,” she said.

Claims of Fabrication

She and another defense lawyer, Scott Hechinger, have suggested in court papers that a group of officers invents criminal informers, and may be motivated to make false arrests to help satisfy department goals or quotas. They also question whether the police are collecting the $1,000 rewards offered to informers from Operation Gun Stop, especially in cases where the informers never materialize.

Deputy Chief Kim Y. Royster, a spokeswoman for the Police Department, said investigators from the Internal Affairs Bureau were looking at the officers’ conduct in these cases. “Any allegations that are made in regards to the credibility” of the officers “are taken very seriously,” she said, adding that programs like Gun Stop protected the anonymity of informers, and that there were layers of oversight “to ensure that the integrity of the program is solid.”

While the individual officers declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, spokesmen for their unions noted that this group had removed more than 300 guns from the streets and the cases were solid.

Mr. Herring was standing outside his apartment on the afternoon of June 4, 2013, next to his bike, when, the police said, he reached into a white plastic bag and removed a gun, putting it in a black plastic bag. He tossed that bag in the bushes — the entire sequence witnessed by a plainclothes officer, the police said.

Mr. Herring said he had been running errands, making stops at C-Town, Bargain Land and a dollar store. When the police told him he was being arrested for gun possession, he said, he was shocked.

Mr. Herring, 52, had been arrested three other times, twice for drugs and once for burglary; he had not been arrested again until this gun case, records show. He said that he had not used drugs since 1997, and that he most certainly did not have a gun when he was arrested in 2013.

“I’m in front of the building,” he said, questioning the police’s account, “waving a gun like some maniac?”

Ms. Silberman first learned of potential problems with the officers’ credibility when prosecutors in Mr. Herring’s case disclosed that testimony by Detective Jean-Baptiste had been challenged by a judge in an evidence-suppression hearing on a gun case in 2013.

Ms. Silberman called the defense lawyer in that case, Jeffrey Chabrowe, and was surprised to hear how similar the cases were.

Mr. Chabrowe’s client, Eugene Moore, had been arrested on a gun possession charge by Detective Jean-Baptiste, who is now retired, and Sgt. Vassilios Aidiniou. Those officers, along with Lieutenant Babington and Officer Jean Gaillard, participated in Mr. Herring’s arrest.

Like Mr. Herring, Mr. Moore had been standing next to a bike in the afternoon, the police said, and had stored a gun in a white plastic bag underneath containers of takeout food. There was also a criminal informer involved, the police said.

Mr. Moore, who could not afford bail, spent a year in jail before an October 2013 hearing on the case. At that hearing, Detective Jean-Baptiste said the informer had told the police that “they were with someone” with a gun in a white plastic bag, on bikes, heading toward Rutland Road and Rockaway Parkway.

Police officers arrived about 20 minutes later, and — even though the suspected gunman was supposed to be bicycling — they found Mr. Moore standing at the same intersection, next to a bicycle with a white bag on the handlebars.

Detective Jean-Baptiste went on to give conflicting testimony about the informer and the circumstances of the arrest. Justice William Harrington of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn called the detective “extremely evasive” and said he did not find him “to be credible.” The judge suppressed the gun evidence, and Mr. Moore’s case was dismissed and sealed.


Ms. Silberman then found another case involving Lieutenant Babington, Detective Jean-Baptiste and Sergeant Aidiniou, handled by a colleague at Brooklyn Defender Services, Renee Seman.

In that case, Mr. Hooper was standing on the street when Detective Jean-Baptiste, in plainclothes, approached from behind, tipped off, the police said, by an informer. At that very moment, the police said, Mr. Hooper reached into his pocket, took out a gun wrapped in a red bandanna and threw it in the trash.

Prosecutors declined to bring the confidential informer in that case to court, so a hearing was held to determine if the officer’s observations sufficed as probable cause for the arrest. In that hearing, in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Detective Jean-Baptiste described how he had first seen a bulge in the shape of a gun in the defendant’s pocket, even as he acknowledged that he was a car-length away and that the defendant was wearing a long shirt and baggy pants.

“Supposedly this defendant doesn’t see the police coming, but elects out of nowhere to take the object out of his pants pocket and dump it in a garbage can?” Justice Guy J. Mangano said. “I find it incredible that they thought it was a gun.”

Before Justice Mangano made a decision in the case, the district attorney offered Mr. Hooper a plea deal for time served — he had spent almost a year in jail — and Mr. Hooper agreed.

Other questionable cases arose.

In 2007, federal prosecutors brought a case against Terry Cross, who was arrested after the police saw him in the backyard of a house where drug dealing was suspected. Officers found a gun in a gray plastic bag near where Mr. Cross was standing, as well as marijuana, the police said. Gun and drug charges were filed.

In that case, too, there was a confidential informer, the police said, and the defendant asked prosecutors to bring that person to court. Prosecutors opposed the motion, and later said the informer had died.

Lieutenant Babington and a partner, Victor Troiano, along with two other officers, testified in pretrial hearings in 2008. Afterward, the District Court judge, Dora L. Irizarry, said the officers’ testimony “was just incredible, and I say ‘incredible’ as a matter of law.”

“I believe these officers perjured themselves,” Judge Irizarry added. “In my view, there is a serious possibility that some evidence was fabricated by these officers.”

She granted Mr. Cross’s motion to suppress certain statements. The case was then dismissed at the prosecutors’ request. Mr. Cross brought a civil suit against the police officers and the city, which was settled in 2010 for $115,000.

In another federal gun possession case, which went to trial in 2008, prosecutors considered statements by Lieutenant Babington and Officer Troiano, who is now retired, to be “inconsistent testimony.” The defendant was acquitted after one hour of deliberations.

That same year, a judge’s decision in another gun possession case involved Lieutenant Babington and Officer Troiano. According to the police, one of them was told by an informer the name, location and description of a man with a gun. The officers arrived at the location, recovered a gun and ammunition and arrested the man. A Criminal Court judge in Brooklyn, Ruth E. Smith, ordered prosecutors to bring the informer to court; they did not.

Judge Smith found the prosecution’s efforts to get in touch with the informer insufficient and suppressed the gun and ammunition evidence. The case was dismissed and sealed.

The Legal Aid Society reviewed its files and found several gun possession cases involving at least two of the officers in which the charges had been dismissed, and even more cases in which they had been reduced to lesser offenses in plea agreements.

“When we have gun cases, they don’t go away fast,” said Justine M. Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the criminal practice of Legal Aid. “You look at the total number of dismissals for these officers and over all for the 67th Precinct, and they’re really high.”

Back in Court

Mr. Herring is scheduled to appear on Monday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where Justice Dineen Riviezzo has ordered the prosecutor, Gregory D. Basso, to produce the confidential informer. A judge has already ordered Mr. Basso to do this once, and Mr. Basso has not. Justice Riviezzo noted that this case was about “credibility.”

Eric Gonzalez, the chief assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, said prosecutors would make every effort to produce the criminal informer on Monday, and if that was not possible, might reconsider pursuit of the case “because of the underlying allegations with the team of officers.”

Mr. Herring, who has been out of jail on $3,500 bail that his sister posted, said the arrest left him feeling humiliated.

“I don’t know why I’m in this situation. I thought maybe when I cleaned up my life, I’d never be back,” he said. “Why do these people want to prosecute me and have me convicted of this crime that I didn’t do? I just don’t understand it.”

[I.Can't.Breathe]

New York Police Officer Assaults Judge While Other Officers Watch; DA Declines to Prosecute for "Lack of Evidence"

Judge Thomas Raffaele's Alleged NYPD Attacker Won't Face Criminal Charges
Posted: 08/22/2012 5:14 pm EDT Updated: 08/22/2012 5:19 pm EDT

No criminal charges will be filed against an NYPD officer accused of violently striking a New York state Supreme Court justice in the throat in an unprovoked attack earlier this summer, the Queens district attorney said Wednesday.

Judge Thomas Raffaele, who reported the alleged assault, called the DA's decision "shocking" and accused the NYPD officers involved of lying to cover up their misconduct.

"For this to happen, for me to be attacked by a cop -- and for the cops to do this huge cover up -- it's really changing my view of the force," Raffaele told The Huffington Post.

Raffaele said he is strongly considering filing a lawsuit against the police department over the alleged attack. "It may be that there is no other option," he said.

In a statement, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said his office lacked the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer "intentionally and unjustifiably" struck the judge.

"We find that there is insufficient evidence of criminality to support a charge that the police officer acted with intent to injure," Brown said.

The alleged assault on the judge happened as police officers were restraining a man who was reportedly chasing people with a metal pipe on a Queens street around midnight in early June.

Raffaele said he came upon two officers restraining the man and called 911 to request that more police respond to the scene, where a large group of people was gathering. The officer allegedly repeatedly drove his knee into the detained man's back, the judge said, causing some in the crowd to shout at him.

At that point, Raffaele said the officer flew into a rage, began screaming obscenities and randomly attacked several people in the crowd. He said he was hit in the throat with a military-style open hand chop that sent him to the hospital for the night.

"This was not some little punch or shove," he said. "It was an all-out military blow to my larynx."

Raffaele said that supervisory officers at the scene refused to take his complaint of being assaulted.

In June, the NYPD said that its internal affairs bureau was working with the Queens DA's office to investigate the judge's claims.

That investigation cleared the officers involved in the episode of criminal conduct.

"After an extensive and thorough investigation of the facts and circumstances of the matter -– that included multiple witness interviews and reviews of police reports and medical records -– my office has concluded that the facts do not warrant the filing of criminal charges," Brown said.

The matter will now be referred to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board and to the NYPD "for any possible violation" of NYPD rules or procedures.

Brown said that his office had "no opinion" as to whether any administrative or procedural violations took place.

Raffaele criticized the DA's investigation as half-hearted and said that witnesses to the incident were not interviewed for nearly two months, and only after he complained about the slow progress of the probe.

He also accused several NYPD officers of lying about the events by saying that he had behaved "aggressively" toward them.

"I was really amazed that two or three of them lied about it," he said. "It's really damaging to the respect that I've had all my life for the police department."