Michael Mineo has accused New York City police of beating him and sexually assaulting him. He is suing the city of New York for $220 million.
In a report dated June 6, 2009, three officers have been charged in the alleged attack on October 15, 2008 on a subway platform, and are facing trial: Officer Richard Kern is charged with sexual assault according to Mineo, with a police nightstick), and Officers Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales are charged with "hindering prosecution and official misconduct." In an October 2008 report, Officers Kern and Morales are not mentioned, but Officer Cruz's partner, Joel Jugraj, are mentioned by name. Allegedly, the 24-year-old Mineo was stopped by police for smoking marijuana. Mineo says the police warned him not to go to the hospital or to a police precinct, telling him he would face felony charges if he did so. Mineo says he went to the hospital anyway - that he was raped with disabling injuries, including "a rectum laceration." Well, that's one report: 1) raped with a police nightstick and then there's this report 2) raped with a "radio antenna." A mother of two teenagers had a few words to say about Michael Mineo, however:If the cops snapped off that radio antenna up his ass, I wouldn't give a f- - - about that," said Laura Boston. Her sons Gerald, 16, and Elijah, 14, were allegedly beaten by Mineo and four others in the Downtown Brooklyn tattoo parlor where he works.The New York Times reports that a transit officer has come forward with his eye-witness account saying he saw "a colleague jab a baton into Mr. Mineo's buttocks." The same report says:"My son has dentures because of that man."
"Five guys beat up my sons, so it's right that it took five cops to beat him up. I don't wish him any harm or anything, but God don't like ugly. You get what you give, you know."
Mr. Mineo has had multiple arrests, mostly on minor drug possession charges, but also one on an assault charge. That sprang from an April case in which he is accused of hitting a teenager over the head with a wooden stool in the tattoo parlor where he works as a body piercer.Hopefully, no report of police brutality is true, and I suppose the hospital report will give us the start of the truth. If Michael Mineo is a New York police sodomy victim, or a victim of undue police violence, then he should have his day in court, but I hate to hear reports like this. So many suffer - all the brave and honorable police officers who would never, never consider doing anything like this, and who must live and work each day with the burden of an undeserved hate-mongering public's perceptions.
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