New York, NY – At approximately 11:00 PM on June 1st, NYPD Detective Joseph Nicolosi allegedly spotted 19-year-old Juan Rivera trespassing inside a closed CVS on 5th Avenue near the Empire State Building.
As the detective tried to apprehend Rivera, police say he resisted, resulting in wounds and injuries being sustained by the 17-year veteran of the department. And now he is suing.
New York Daily News reports:
“Nicolosi suffered cuts, bruises and a sprained knee requiring ongoing medical treatment, according to the suit filed Saturday in Manhattan Supreme Court.”
That same court filing also states that “Nicolosi was further traumatized by the incident and continues to suffer pain, soreness, discomfort, sleeplessness and agitation,” according to NBC New York.
While Nicolosi’s suit is the first to be filed against a rioter, it certainly won’t be the last says Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, speaking with Fox News.
“If you assault a New York City Detective and there are no consequences from the criminal justice system, we have to have other means to protect our detectives.” he stated.
“It’s heart-wrenching because they are out there doing a job under very difficult circumstances, trying to protect the innocent people that are protesting while the criminal element is within that group, assaulting, looting and victimizing not only police officers and detectives out there, but also the people of the city.”
The Detectives’ Endowment Association has represented roughly 19,000 current and former detectives. They have vowed to sue any protestor, rioter or looter who attacked its members.
“They’ve had urine thrown at them, rocks thrown at them, shot at, assaulted. I don’t know how much more they could take a day of putting up with a lot out there. And, you know, they are the finest in the world and they are doing a fabulous job, but they are being demonized by the elected officials,” DiGiacomo said.
But not everyone is in favor of the lawsuits.
“This is not a new tactic by the police. This was tried back in the 1990s in New York City, at another time when there was a great deal of unrest and ultimately, it didn’t work,” said civil rights attorney Ron Kuby.
“If the police want to use the civil law as a tool in their policing, those of us who pay their salaries have the opportunity now to engage in some real reform, which is, stop the indemnification of cops, stop the free lawyers for the police, stop the qualified immunity for the police — and we’ll see how that works out for them.”
Let’s pause to consider what Kuby is saying.
Qualified immunity protects officers from being sued personally as long as they aren’t completely incompetent or their actions have not violated a clearly established statutory or Constitutional right.
In those instances, qualified immunity is off the table for officers. But as long as they have done nothing wrong in the commission of their job, they are protected from frivolous law suits.
But, what about reversing the scenario. A cop is assaulted while trying to legally and morally carry out his oath-sworn duties. The suspect resists arrest, causing injuries to the officer, The suspect is charged with trespassing and resisting, as was the case with Rivera.
This is New York City. The District Attorney will not prosecute this case. Most likely, the suspect will walk free, and never face the consequences of his choice to resist.
Meanwhile, that officer may have long-term injuries that shorten his career. But, there is no other method for recourse against the person who willfully caused those injuries.
Isn’t it ironic that a civil rights attorney says that cops should not have access to the civil law that he uses to fight for his clients every day?
Continuing on Kuby’s statement, he wants to remove the very freedom that everyone has, and that is a right to representation. It’s right there in Miranda. So, Kuby wants criminals to have access to a free lawyer, but not cops.
Fox News continues:
“Lawmakers in Congress and some state legislatures have moved to strip qualified immunity as a legal protection for police. Kuby also said police officers have gone to great lengths to protect their privacy, which would be removed by filing a lawsuit.
‘The cops freak out about their privacy concerns and don’t want their personal history handed over to the very people that they are suing,’ Kuby said. ‘That is another powerful reason not to go through with these lawsuits.’”
But DiGiacomo countered:
“We will be behind our detectives and pursue these cases civilly and send a message to the criminal element, that you are not going to get away with this. If we can’t get you one way, we will get you another.”
New York has a new ‘police reform’ package. It’s almost as if they want every cop to quit. (Op-Ed)
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed a sweeping package of police accountability measures, which include allowing the public to access officers’ past disciplinary records and criminalizing the use of chokeholds.
https://t.co/PnO0GrGjAo— NPR (@NPR) June 12, 2020
“We will be permanently frozen, stripped of all resources and unable to do the job. We don’t want to see our communities suffer, but this is what Governor Cuomo and our elected leaders have chosen.”
Lynch pointed out that police officers are left to pick up the pieces in areas in which New York state has failed its citizens.
Lynch continued:
“Governor Cuomo and our legislative leaders have no business celebrating today. New York state had been failing our communities for decades: failing to provide economic opportunity, failing to educate our youth, failing to care for the vulnerable and the mentally ill.
“Police officers spend our days addressing issues caused by these failures.”
Even Cuomo himself admitted to the shortcomings, noting a difference of $23,000 per student between a wealthy school district and a poorer one.
The bills passed in New York include a ban on chokeholds, facilitation of suits against frivoloud calls to police officer, and the formation of a special investigative body to examine deaths related to police encounters.
In addition, Section 50-a has been eliminated, rendering public all complaints and disciplinary actions against officers. Police unions are concerned that this action will encourage “frivolous complaints.”
Although revealing personal information of officers and families is still not permitted after elimination of Section 50-a, the targeting of police officers, and the potential for hostile acts against them, remain of concern.
Today New York enacted landmark reform that will raise the bar on policing and make our state more just.
The countless voices speaking out and demanding justice were heard. This is just the beginning. pic.twitter.com/hL36ZcaMPQ
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 12, 2020
New York State Senator George Borrello noted:
On Tuesday, the heads of several police unions in New York blasted the media, politicians and others for their portrayal of police officers in the aftermath of the George Floyd homicide involving a Minneapolis police officer.
They complained that the police were being “treated like animals.”
Actually, one could argue that animals are treated better than police are these days.
Mike O’Meara, president of the New York Association of Police Benevolent Associations told a gathered news conference, while gesturing to a group of police officers gathered behind him:
“I’m not Derek Chauvin; they are not him,” he said. “He killed someone. We didn’t! We are restrained. We roundly reject what he did as disgusting. It’s not what we do ”
National Review said O’Meara lit into various constituencies in defending police across the country from unprecedented criticism in light of the actions of one rogue officer in Minnesota.
“The legislators, the press, everybody’s trying to shame us into being embarrassed about our profession,” he said.
“Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect…We’ve been left out of the conversation, we’ve been vilified—it’s disgusting…trying to make us embarrassed of our profession.”
Holding up his badge, O’Meara continued:
“You know what? This [police badge] isn’t stained by someone in Minneapolis. It’s still got a shine on it, and so do theirs,” pointing to fellow officers.
“Our legislators abandoned us. The press is vilifying us,” O’Meara continued.
“Nobody talks about all the police officers that were killed in the last week in the United States of America and there were a number of them.”
O’Meara also cited the fact that there are over 375 million interactions between police and the public each year, a majority of which are “overwhelmingly positive,” Newsweek reported.
“But what we read in the papers all week is that in the black community, mothers are worried about their children getting home from school without being killed by a cop,” O’Meara said.
“What world are we living in? That doesn’t happen. It does not happen.”
Holy smokes! NYPD union president Pat Lynch does Not hold back!
He BLASTS the politicians in an epic show of force & indignation! 👏👏🇺🇸https://t.co/FHz6GEXHws— Olenna 🇺🇸 ♥️💫 Alas, Babylon (@Olenna_QOT) June 10, 2020
On Sunday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose daughter was arrested during the riots in New York, said that the city would divert some money away from the NYPD to other programs.
During the height of the riots in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted the NYPD, saying, “The police in New York City were not effective at doing their job…Period.”
Cuomo’s remarks drew sharp criticism from NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan on Monday.
“I’m watching my men and women out there dealing with stuff that no cop should ever have to deal with; bricks, bottles, rocks, hit in the face with bottles, and continuing to go forward to make an arrest,” Monahan said.
“For a governor to be sitting in his office saying that we’re not doing a good job—I’m outraged.”
The cuts proposed by DeBlasio come at a time when violent crime has surged in the city, despite the fact it’s still in what is supposed to be a lockdown over the coronavirus.
According to Breitbart, murder has jumped over 94 percent over the last month compared to the same time period last year.
Burglaries, which are subject to the New York legislature’s “get out of jail free” bill, has increased nearly 34 percent year over year for the same time period. Finally, auto theft, with suspects also benefiting from the “bail reform bill” has become the fastest growing crime in the Big Apple.
De Blasio of course is pandering to the Black Lives Matter criminal enterprise, which is lobbying city officials across the country to defund police. De Blasio has vowed to look at cutting the NYPD funding during the city’s budget process in the coming weeks.
As politicians, Hollywood elites, overpaid athletes, and the criminal element throw every police officer in the country under the bus, crime in their cities is going through the roof. Keep on defunding the police…there’s a movie called “Escape From New York” that may be more of a reality than was ever anticipated.
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