|
|
|
| NEWS > 03 November 2008 |
Other related articles:
Drug-squad officer cleared in
A suspended Toronto police officer has been acquitted of assault in London, but remains locked up as he faces a string of other criminal charges.
Ned Maodus, a former member of the Toronto drug squad at the centre of a corruption probe, was acquitted of all charges Wednesday involving an alleged road rage incident.
Maodus, however, was taken back into custody to await a bail decision scheduled for Monday on charges relating to an arrest in mid-March for allegedly attacking his girlfriend with a long knife and threatening to kill her.
Over the course of the next... Read more
|
 Article sourced from
|
|
New York Times - United States
03 November 2008
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
|
NYPD
|
Officers Reassigned After Accu
The Police Department on Monday reassigned to desk duty four officers who are under scrutiny over charges by a man who said he was sodomized with a piece of police equipment during a scuffle in a Brooklyn subway station, a police spokesman said.
The decision to place the officers on modified assignment requires them to surrender their guns and shields, and suggests a change in the position of the department, which had insisted that it saw no evidence of misconduct by the officers.
Officers are often placed on modified duty in anticipation of possible disciplinary action.
The reported assault is said to have occurred Oct. 15, and a review of the encounter by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau over the following week failed to find wrongdoing by the officers, who are from the 71st Precinct.
But the investigation has continued, under the auspices of the Brooklyn district attorney, and new evidence and witnesses — including a fifth officer, assigned to the transit police — have emerged. The outlines of the transit officer’s account of what took place in the encounter was relayed last week to investigators, and his lawyer, Paul P. Martin, met with prosecutors on Monday, Mr. Martin said.
The police and prosecutors have not released much information about their continuing investigation. They did search a locker in the 71st Precinct station house on Monday, one official said, but the results of the search were unclear.
One law enforcement official who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation said the action against the four officers — Alex Cruz, Noel Jugraj, Richard Kern and Andrew Morales — stemmed from information from the transit officer, who was present during the alleged assault, but who, according to his lawyer, is being treated as a witness rather than as a target of the investigation.
No action has been taken against that officer, who has not been identified.
Stuart London, the lawyer for Officer Cruz, declined comment; the lawyers for the three other officers did not return telephone messages.
On Monday afternoon, a police spokesman declined comment, citing a grand jury investigation by the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes. Later in the evening, the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, confirmed that the action had been taken against the officers.
In the encounter being investigated, the officers chased a 24-year-old man they said they believed was smoking marijuana into the Prospect Park subway station. Lawyers for the man, Michael Mineo, a 24-year-old body piercer at a tattoo parlor, said that the officers tackled Mr. Mineo and that three held him down while a fourth sodomized him with a piece of equipment.
No drugs were found, and the police let him go with a disorderly conduct summons. Mr. Mineo ended up in a hospital with injuries, including a tear to his rectum that one law enforcement official said was both external and internal.
The police initially cast doubt on Mr. Mineo’s account, saying in a statement that the “assertion that he was sodomized is not supported by independent civilian witnesses on the scene.” More recently, though, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, has said he welcomed the grand jury investigation by Mr. Hynes.
In placing the officers on modified duty, the department would not necessarily be suggesting that it accepted Mr. Mineo’s account of brutality.
But the change would suggest that the department now suspects some level of misconduct on the part of the officers, either in connection with the encounter or some other matter.
The law enforcement official pointed out that after the officers subdued Mr. Mineo, they checked whether there were any outstanding warrants against him, finding one stemming from charges in Pennsylvania. But despite the outstanding warrant, they did not arrest him, instead issuing him the summons, the most lenient action they could take against him.
Mr. Martin, the lawyer for the transit officer, declined to provide his client’s name, but said he would meet with Mr. Hynes’s prosecutors again this week. He added that there has been no determination as to whether his client will testify before the grand jury.
|
| |
 EiP Comments:
|
|---|
|
| |
* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
 |
Ethics in Policing, based in the UK, provide information and advice about the following:
Policing Research | Police News articles | Police Corruption | International Policing | Police Web Sites | Police Forum | Policing Ethics | Police Journals | Police Publications |
|
| |
|
