Civil Rights

Rankin & Taylor Client is Assaulted By NYPD, Incident Caught on Video by Activist

From The New York Times, “In Subway, Activist Records Stop-and-Frisk He Says Proves Its Dark Side” (July 26, 2012):

The video shows a police officer striding toward a young man standing on a platform at the 45th Street subway station in Brooklyn. A few seconds later, the officer pats him down. Shortly afterward, the young man appears to fidget against a wall and the officer slams him to the ground, ripping a subway ad from the wall in the process. The officer does it again, then puts the young man in a headlock and handcuffs him.

That scene was captured by David Galarza, a local activist, who said he recorded it last Thursday night. At a news conference on Thursday in Brooklyn, Mr. Galarza and other local activists said the officer’s confrontation with the young man, Sean Pagan, 19, was another example of the police’s mistreatment of the predominantly Hispanic and Asian residents of Sunset Park.

David B. Rankin, Mr. Pagan’s attorney,

insisted that his client had complied with the officer’s search. “There was no reason for this officer to do this invasive of a search at all,” he said. “From that Showbox for iPhone overreaching, even just a twitch results in two body slams to the floor.”