Woodside Cop on trial for police brutality

January 22, 2010 | Posted by Sunnyside Post

The trial of Officer Richard Kern, a Woodside resident, began Thursday, where he is accused of repeatedly shoving his retractable baton between the buttocks of a drug suspect. The New York Times carried the story.

Vivid Testimony in Trial of Three Officers Accused in Subway Station Assault

In October 2008, from different vantage points, three members of the Dallas family watched the frenzied sequence of events that Michael Mineo says led to his abuse at the hands of police officers and that the officers say led to a mostly unexceptional arrest.

Andrea Dallas watched from her car parked on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn as police officers who had seen Mr. Mineo smoking a marijuana cigarette chased him into the Prospect Park subway station. Her son, James Avery Dallas, and her husband, also named James, saw the officers confront Mr. Mineo in the station.

On Thursday, as the case opened in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Ms. Dallas and her son testified that they had heard the same anguished expression of disbelief over and over again from Mr. Mineo: that an officer had “shoved a walkie-talkie” between his buttocks.

“He never stopped yelling,” Ms. Dallas said. “That’s the only thing I heard him say.”

The Dallases’ testimony provided the first witness accounts of the hazy, disputed events of Oct. 15, 2008, when prosecutors contend Officer Richard Kern repeatedly shoved his retractable baton between Mr. Mineo’s buttocks. Two other officers, Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales, are charged with covering up the assault. The officers have been assigned to desk duty, with their guns and badges taken away.

For the rest of the story, please click on; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/nyregion/22mineo.html?bl

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