Saturday, August 25, 2012

Brown won't bring brutality charges

From the NY Times:

After a three-month investigation, the Queens district attorney has decided not to bring criminal charges against a police officer who was accused of assaulting a State Supreme Court justice on the street in what the judge contended was an unprovoked attack, officials said Wednesday.

The episode, which occurred just after midnight on June 1 as a crowd watching two officers subdue an unruly homeless man became increasingly restive, was the subject of what District Attorney Richard A. Brown called “an extensive and thorough investigation.”

In a statement, Mr. Brown said his office “has concluded that the facts do not warrant the filing of criminal charges” because “there is insufficient evidence of criminality to support a charge that the police officer acted with the intent to injure or that physical injury (as defined by statute and case law) occurred.”

The judge, Thomas D. Raffaele, 69, who hears matrimonial cases and has been on the bench since 2006, said that he was “very shocked” and “very disappointed” by the decision. He criticized the investigation by the district attorney’s office.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This A-hole needs to mind his own fvcking business..... Seems like everyone wants to micromanage every move a cop makes.I say go back to the old days.respond to a radio run,safely slowly and take a report.Be reactive,not pro active.............Then watch everyone scream to have you do real police work.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't want to be a law enforcement officer coming up before this guy...

Anonymous said...

Take the word of a cop over a judge, eh? I wonder which profession has a higher percentage of corruption?

Anonymous said...

"I say go back to the old days"

Yea go back to the old days when people KNEW that law enforcement was simply a interference to their personal freedoms.

"Prior to the industrial Revolution in England and America, police forces were intentionally kept weak because people knew the police would be a threat to their freedom. "

Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, op.cit; Chapter 12,by Roger Lane The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., 2003, Vol 25, article "Police," pp. 959-960

The good old days, sounds good.

Anonymous said...

dump Richard Brown. he's too old to do the job.

Anonymous said...


NYPD has been given too much power, that's Giuliani’s legacy to the city.

If a supreme court justice can get beat up and no charges will be brought against the NYPD brutality, what can a normal citizen expect? We can get kicked at will no nothing will get done. Does NYC need a Rodney King like occurrence to wake up? I hope not.

Anonymous said...

Unlucky for Raffaele, no one was recording this on their cell phone. In the account I read, Raffaele was not warned, not arrested, etc. but chopped in the throat by a cop.

Brown seems to be conceding that the cop hit Raffaele, but that it wasn't intentional. Just a cop being a cop.

Anonymous said...

He hears "matrimonial cases" since 2006...............another cronyism hack?