Some True Stories of NYPD Crimes Against the People

1989: Central Park 5—The Ruthless Frame-up and Imprisonment of Five Innocent Youth

On the night of April 19, 1989, Trisha Meili was jogging in Manhattan’s Central Park when she was attacked, brutally beaten, and left for dead.¹

The NYPD quickly swept up five Black and Hispanic youth, aged 14-16—Antron McCray, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Raymond Santana. Their only actual connection to the crime was that they had been in the Park—which borders their Harlem neighborhood—that night.

But being Black and Hispanic was enough reason for the NYPD to build a case and to demonize them in the media as a subhuman “wolfpack.” A team of skilled interrogators lied, bullied and manipulated these kids for almost 24 hours—without sleep and without attorneys. Finally four of the five, terrified, isolated and exhausted, “confessed.”

A District Attorney admitted 14 years later that these confessions contradicted each other in major respects, and also contradicted basic facts of the crime, including where it took place—these are hallmarks of coerced confessions. And the youths retracted their confessions almost immediately.

Nor was there any physical evidence—no DNA, hair, skin cells, semen, etc.—linking any of them to the crime, no witnesses, no evidence that Ms. Meili was attacked by a group. And as would be revealed much later, police were all along in possession of physical evidence of an unidentified attacker.

But none of this mattered to the NYPD, which was determined to blame, frame, convict and punish these kids.

As revcom.us wrote:

The police lies became fodder for a full-out racist hysteria that was part of a larger campaign going on in the U.S. to brand a whole generation of Black youth as inhuman "super-predators" ... A week after their arrests, prior to even the sham of a trial, billionaire racist blowhard Donald Trump purchased full page ads in four New York papers calling for the death penalty for the youth, saying that "they should be forced to suffer."

These kids were convicted and served 6 to 12 years in prison, their youth stolen, they and their families demonized in the press.

Then the lies fell apart. Again from revcom.us:

In 2002, Matias Reyes, already in prison for other rapes and a murder, confessed to having attacked the Central Park Jogger on his own. The DNA evidence all matched up with him, and also with that found on another woman who had been raped in Central Park two days before the “Jogger” attack. … Matias, apparently covered in blood, had even been questioned by police on the night of the attack but then let go.

And yet, even after all of this, and even after the District Attorney went to court to vacate the convictions, the NYPD continued to publicly insist that the five youth “most likely” participated in the rape together with Reyes.

1994: Nicholas Heyward Jr.—Gunned Down for Playing With a Toy Gun

At 7:30 pm on September 27, 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. was playing cops and robbers in a stairwell at the Gowanus Houses project in Brooklyn. As described in NYCityLens.com, Nicholas and two friends rounded a corner. Seeing a real cop—Housing Authority Police Officer² Brian George—Nicholas dropped his toy gun and said “We’re only playing. We’re only playing,” but George shot him in the stomach with his very real .38 caliber service revolver.

Nicholas died at 3:00 a.m. the next morning.

The Brooklyn District Attorney refused to even present the case to a grand jury. He held a press conference with a table full of realistic-looking fake guns to make it seem like the shooting was “justified,” a “split-second decision.” But the “gun” Nicholas carried was an obvious toy—plastic, with a long orange tip.

For 21 years, Nick’s father, Nicholas Heyward Sr., fought doggedly for justice together with other parents of children murdered by police. Finally in September 2015, then-District Attorney Ken Thompson agreed to reopen the investigation. But a year later, the DA’s office announced that they would not bring charges, claiming that “Based on the totality of the evidence, we have concluded that the shooting did not rise to the level of a criminal act. Officer George reasonably believed that his life was in danger when faced with a realistic-looking gun aimed at him.”

Another housing cop, quoted in a 2004 NY Post article on this case, revealed the depraved indifference of these pigs to the lives of Black children: “’You don’t know how many times I’ve come close to shooting someone,’ said a 10-year housing cop veteran… ‘I’d rather be tried by nine [in a grand jury] then carried by seven [pallbearers].’”

1994: Anthony Baez—Choked to Death Over a Stray Football

On December 22, 1994. Anthony, a 29-year-old Puerto Rican man, was hanging out with his family in front of their home in the Mt. Hope section of the Bronx, playing touch football with his brothers. A couple of times the football accidentally hit police cars parked nearby. The driver of one car, NYPD Officer Livoti, backed by five other cops, jumped out and arrested Anthony’s brother David for disorderly conduct, handcuffing him and slamming his head into the squad car’s hood. When Anthony protested, Livoti turned on him, handcuffing and choking him for about a minute, ignoring Anthony’s father’s shouts that Anthony suffered from asthma. Anthony died that night from asphyxiation.

The Baez family and many others initiated determined public protests which after two years forced the District Attorney to indict Livoti for criminally negligent homicide. He was granted a bench trial (meaning the judge alone would hear and decide the case, not a jury).

According to NYPD Confidential, “Scores of cops showed up in the Bronx courtroom” to support Livoti. “The president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Lou Matarazzo, spent a couple of days as a spectator. His predecessor, Phil Caruso, came out of retirement, greeting Livoti outside the courtroom by hugging and kissing him on the cheek.”

As revcom.us reported on the trial:

Livoti’s defense claimed no chokehold was put on Anthony, that he died of an asthma attack. But Anthony's brothers and his father testified that Livoti put Anthony in a chokehold until his body went limp and fell to the ground. And the chief medical examiner of New York, Dr. Charles Hirsch, left no doubt about what killed Anthony. He said, “The compression of his neck, in my opinion, is the dominant cause of his death.” ... Five other expert witnesses agreed with Hirsch. [Pictures showed] hemorrhages in his eyes and multiple hemorrhages on his larynx.

Five other cops were involved in the incident; none intervened to stop this murder. Four of them testa-lied in court, backing up Livoti’s claims. The judge himself referred to the cops’ testimony as “a nest of perjury,”³ but still acquitted Livoti.

Outrage and protest over this verdict was so great that Livoti was soon fired from the NYPD, and in 1998 he was charged and convicted by the federal government of violating Anthony’s civil rights. He was sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison. Also in 1998, NYPD settled a wrongful death suit by Anthony’s family for three million dollars.

1997: Abner Louima—Raped and Tortured by a Police Gang in Their Lair

On August 9, 1997, Abner Louima, a 30-year-old Haiti immigrant, was outside a Brooklyn club popular with Haitians. A fight broke out and cops showed up in force, hurling racist insults. Revcom.us reported that cops grabbed and cuffed Louima. They drove him around, hurling racist insults, kicking him and hitting him with their radios. Then they took him to their precinct house where the cops who busted him transferred him to Officer Justin Volpe:

Volpe told the other cops, “This collar is mine.” Louima was brought to the duty sergeant’s desk, where his pants were pulled down to his ankles for a “strip search,” in full view of the other cops. Louima remembered, “I kept screaming, ‘Why? Why?’ All the cops heard me, but said nothing.”

Then Volpe and another cop took Louima to the bathroom and closed the door. One cop said, “You ni*gers have to learn to respect police officers.” Another threatened, “If you yell or make any noise, I will kill you.”

Louima described how he was tortured: “One held me and the other one stuck the plunger⁴ up my behind. He pulled it out and shoved it in my mouth, broke my teeth and said, ‘That’s your shit, ni*ger.’ ”

Louima yelled out in pain. The station house was full of cops. But, he said, “No cops said anything. None came to help me.” [All emphasis added.]

Not one cop reported this incident of horrendous torture. And even when a nurse treating Louima in the hospital called NYPD’s Internal Affairs office, she said that the officer who answered clearly “didn’t care” about—and didn’t act on—her call. Only when another nurse contacted local news media did the NYPD take any action.

For the cops it was apparently “business as usual.” In fact, that night when Volpe went home, his dad, a retired cop, asked him how his shift went. Volpe replied: “Routine.” We have to ask: How many other “routine” incidents of torture never see the light of day?

In the wake of huge mass protests, Volpe and another cop were charged with serious crimes. In 1999 Volpe pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced to 30 years in jail. In 2000, Officer Charles Schwarz, was convicted on federal charges but his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was then charged with perjury for covering up the assault and sentenced to five years in jail.

1999: Amadou Diallo—41 Shots!

On February 4, 1999, 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo died in a hail of bullets. Four NYPD plainclothes cops (Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss, part of the infamous NYPD Street Crimes Unit⁵) fired 41 shots, 19 of which entered Diallo’s body as he stood outside his apartment.

As revcom.us wrote, the cops said

Diallo was acting “suspicious.” He “fit the description” of a rapist. He was “reaching” for something they thought was a gun. They fired 41 shots because they thought they were being fired at, either because bullets "ricocheted" back at them or because one of the cops fell to the ground. But these are all lies. The fact is, Diallo was unarmed. He had only a beeper and a wallet.

The cops were placed on paid administrative leave after the murder. For at least 11 days, none were charged or even questioned. It took until March 25 for a grand jury to indict them on charges of second-degree murder and endangerment. In December, the court ordered a change of venue to Albany, in a successful effort to get a jury unfamiliar with the reality of the NYPD. On Feb. 25, 2000, the Albany jury acquitted the cops on all counts.

In 2015, Kenneth Boss—the only one of the four still working for the NYPD—was promoted to sergeant.

2000: Malcolm Ferguson—Chased Down and Killed, on “Suspicion”

On March 1, 2000, 23-year-old Malcolm Ferguson was shot to death by a plainclothes cop just three blocks from where Amadou Diallo was killed a year earlier. Ferguson had been one of 15 people arrested a week before at a protest over the acquittal of the killers of Amadou Diallo. Malcolm’s mother, Juanita Young, believes that Officer Louis Rivera singled him out because of his participation in that protest.

What is known for sure is that Rivera, a drug cop, approached a group of young Black men hanging out and demanded that they “freeze.” Legitimately fearful of these murdering thugs, Malcolm ran into a building, which Rivera said was “suspicious.” Rivera chased him with his gun drawn, although Malcolm was unarmed. Rivera grabbed him, and claims that in the scuffle that ensued, his gun went off “accidentally.” But pathology reports showed that Rivera’s gun was very close to Malcolm’s temple when fired, and that the trigger pressure required is too great for an “accidental” firing.

No criminal charges were ever brought against Rivera and no disciplinary action taken.

In June 2007, a jury awarded Malcolm’s mother, Juanita Young, 10.5 million dollars in damages, holding that “the city and NYPD were 100% responsible for Ferguson's death.”

Juanita has been a leading activist in the fight against police murder since her son’s death. And, according to the Amsterdam Times (writing in 2019), “Nearly every year for the past 19 years, the N.Y.P.D. and the Administration For Child Services have harassed the Ferguson/Young family...”

2006: Sean Bell—Murdered on His Wedding Day

November 25, 2006, was to be 23-year-old Sean Bell’s wedding day. In the early hours of that day, he and three friends were celebrating at a club in the Jamaica section of Queens. A tense scene developed there and they decided to leave. As they got in their car, Gescard Isnora, a plainclothes cop who had followed them out, approached their car, shouting at them.⁶

Panicked by what he thought was a robbery of some kind, Sean drove his car forward, possibly clipping Isnora, and then lurched backwards into an unmarked van full of plainclothes cops who were surveilling the club. Detective Isnora opened fire, as did the cops in the van—50 times! Bullets were everywhere, at least one penetrating a nearby train station, barely missing a passenger. Bell was shot in the neck, shoulder and right arm, and died in the hospital. Two other passengers (Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield) also suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were hospitalized—handcuffed to their beds, even though they were not charged with any crime. Guzman remained in the hospital until January 25, 2007.

Neither Bell nor any of his companions were armed, and other than panicking at Isnora’s approach, they did nothing wrong at all.

After the shooting the five cops were put on paid administrative leave.

On March 16, 2007, three of the cops were indicted by a grand jury for first and second degree manslaughter. They had a bench trial in front of NY Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman, who acquitted them on all charges in April 2008.

In March 2012 (six years after the killings) Detective Isnora was fired for his role. The head of the Detectives’ Endowment Association said this was “disgraceful, excessive and unprecedented.” Three other cops were also forced to retire; a fifth was cleared of all departmental charges.

2012: Ramarley Graham—Unarmed Teenager Murdered in His Own Bathroom.  Mob of Pigs Then Cheers Their Fellow Swine When He Appears In Court.

On February 2, 2012, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was murdered in the bathroom of his own home in the Bronx. Two NYPD narcotics cops had seen Graham on the street and believed he was in possession of marijuana. They chased him home. Ramarley ran inside; the cops kicked down his door and ran up the steps. Detective Richard Haste broke down the bathroom door and fatally shot Ramarley in the chest with a 9 mm handgun. Ramarley’s grandmother and his 6-year-old brother were in the house at the time. His grandmother was taken into custody, held for five hours, and interrogated without an attorney.

Cops tried to claim Ramarley had a gun, but there was none. They found a small packet of weed in the bathroom that they believed Ramarley was trying to flush down the toilet—for that they stole his life.

Haste was initially placed on “modified duty.” Four months later, in June of 2012, a grand jury indicted him on manslaughter charges. After posting bail at his arraignment, Haste was escorted by about a dozen other cops to his car, where around 50 plainclothes cops “applauded and cheered for Haste as he got into the van.”

On May 15, 2013, Bronx County Supreme Court Justice Barrett vacated Haste's manslaughter indictment, stating that the district attorney had given the grand jury flawed instructions. Ramarley’s mom, Constance Malcolm, cried out “They killed my child” and was promptly hauled out of the room by court officers and taken to a hospital; she was released several hours later.

Evidence was presented to a new grand jury, but on August 8, 2013, it too refused to indict Haste.

On March 8, 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of NY announced that it would not file federal charges closed their investigation of Ramarley’s murder.

2014: Eric Garner—“I Can’t Breathe”—Murdered for Selling Loose Cigarettes

On July 17, 2014, cops targeted 43-year-old Eric Garner on a street corner in Staten Island. Garner—a former Parks Department worker who retired for health problems—had been repeatedly harassed, brutalized and arrested for trying to sustain his family by selling loose cigarettes on the street. On this day Garner held his open hands out wide to show he was no threat, and said “It stops now.”

But even that much defiance towards NYPD can be a capital offense. NYPD cop Daniel Pantaleo put Garner in a chokehold and five other cops brought him face down onto the ground. Garner called out “I can’t breathe” eleven times. Then he lay handcuffed, motionless, and unresponsive for seven minutes, receiving no CPR or other aid from the numerous cops there. Even when an ambulance arrived, the EMTs only took his pulse. Garner was pronounced dead in the hospital an hour later.

The incident was filmed by Ramsey Orta and went viral.⁷

All that happened to the cops is that Officers Pantaleo and Justin D’Amico were placed on desk duty.

On December 3, 2014, a Richmond County (Staten Island) grand jury refused to indict Pantaleo or any of the other cops.

The same day,⁸ DOJ announced it would conduct its own investigation, but nothing came of that—in July 2016 the U.S. Attorney General announced there would be no federal charges.

On August 19, 2019, then-Police Commissioner James O’Neill terminated Pantaleo from the NYPD. Pantaleo’s attorney Stuart London announced that his client would sue in state court for reinstatement.