BUFFALO, NY – An incident that occurred in June involving a New York Supreme Court Justice allegedly assaulting an officer has had more details brought to light on the incident, with released bodycam footage of the incident showcasing the alleged assault and matters leading up to it.
While a decision reached in July resulted in no charges being brought forth against the Justice, the released footage is still hardly flattering.
BREAKING: Body camera footage obtained by the @WKBW I-Team through a FOIL request shows that State Supreme Court Justice Mark Grisanti shoved a police officer in June during a fight with neighbors. https://t.co/BySsYr5HSn
— Charlie Specht (@Charlie_Reports) October 13, 2020
The entire debacle originated on June 23rd, when police were notified of a dispute between neighbors that turned into a full-blown physical altercation.
State Supreme Court Justice Mark J. Grisanti and his wife Maria had allegedly instigated a fight with their neighbors, the Meles, over a parking spot in front of their home.
Both Mark and Maria Grisanti were allegedly intoxicated, according to Gina Mele, when they approached their home and Maria Grisanti began to assault Gina’s husband. Maria allegedly punched Gina’s husband in the eye and bit him in the arm and also caused a bruise on Gina’s arm.
Subsequent interviews with the victims did reveal evidence of having suffered an assault.
Considering the alleged brawl that transpired, police did respond, which then led to tensions from the alleged aggressors turning against officers trying to conduct interviews with witnesses.
While Maria Grisanti was lambasting police who were trying to conduct their investigation, an officer warned Maria that if she continued to interrupt the investigative process then she’d be placed in handcuffs:
“Maam, if you don’t stop yelling, this is gonna be a problem for you.”
Maria, as evidenced on video released, did no heed said warning when responding with:
“I don’t care.”
When an officer attempted to place Maria Grisanti into handcuffs, she appears to have put forth resistance which then led to the officer exerting additional force to take her to the ground.
That’s when Justice Mark Grisanti entered the fold and shoved the arresting officer.
Another officer gets involved at that point, tending to Mark Grisanti and instructing him to keep his “hands off a cop”.
Mark Grisanti then begins to instruct officers to leave his wife alone, and then begins reciting how he has family members in law enforcement:
“You better get off my fucking wife…My daughter and my son are both Buffalo police officers…I’ll call them right now.”
The Justice continues issuing threats of “problems” against officers if they continued proceeding with the arrest of his wife:
“If you don’t get the cuffs off her right now, you’re gonna have a problem.”
— Dr. Alfant Gomez (@BruceWhitaker14) October 13, 2020
An officer responds to Mark, saying “don’t threaten that,” which then Mark proceeds to say that he intends to call the lieutenant who supervises both his daughter and son-in-law from the Buffalo Police Department.
The Justice continues doing the name-dropping act, saying that Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia was his cousin and that he has a personal relationship with Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown.
Reportedly, Captain Rinaldo from the BPD says that Mark Grisanti and Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia are not related.
But the charade of name-dropping had clearly aggravated Officer Richard Hy, who had reached the boiling point of Mark Grisanti trying to intimidate officers with the ‘do you know who I am?’ act.
Officer Hy gets into Mark Grisanti’s face and delivers the following speech of his own:
“You wanna drop another copper’s name? You want to scream about you ‘know Gramaglia’ or the ‘mayor’? Why don’t you shut the fuck up? You want to say I know all these coppers, I know all these things? You want to make us look dirty.? Is that what you want to do?”
And then, Mark Grisanti gets the handcuffs placed on him and escorted to a police cruiser.
Now while Commissioner Gramaglia isn’t Mark’s cousin, he did manage to have a phone call while cuffed in the cruiser with his real cousin, Detective Mark Costantino.
Detective Constantino was made aware of the allegations against Mark Grisanti assaulting the officer, and calmly asked him:
“They’re saying you pushed an officer. You wouldn’t do that, would ya?”
Mark Grisanti solemnly admitted to what he did to his cousin on the phone:
“I pushed him and I said, ‘Don’t friggin tackle her’ and I pushed him… I apologized to him, Mark, right after that because I said, ‘Listen, I respect you guys in law enforcement,’ you know I go, ‘My daughter’s a police officer, my son in law’s a police officer, all my family’s police officers.”
Detective Constantino pointed out the obvious in the matter – that this entire debacle is not going to reflect well on Mark Grisanti no matter the outcome due to his role in the courts:
“I mean, I just…the thing that freaks me out is that everything you do is gonna be scrutinized because of your job.”
Mark Grisanti replied:
“Well Mark, I never mentioned anything about my job or who I was, you could ask any officer, I never mentioned anything like that.”
Now, considering all that allegedly took place back in June – the fight with the neighbors, assaulting police and the ilk – not a single charge befell against the Grisanti family. But that doesn’t mean Mark Grisanti is out of the woods completely.
Remove him, he’s unfit.
— a245b1 (@_a245b1) July 8, 2020
While Eerie County isn’t pursuing any criminal charges in the matter, investigators from the New York State Committee on Judicial Conduct reached out to Gina Mele regarding the incident.
To illustrate the gravity of that outreach, said committee has the power to remove judges.
Grisanti’s attorney, Leonard D. Zaccagnino, commented on that aspect noting that his client isn’t thrilled about the committee entering the fold:
“Certainly he’s not happy about it. Certainly he wishes the incident never occurred.”
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