Jess Remington|Dec. 19, 2013
6:40 pm
It's happening: The Civilian
Complaint Review Board, an independent police misconduct agency that was
recently awarded the power to prosecute NYPD officers, is making its first
prosecution for misapplied stop-and-frisk.
BloomsberriesBloomsberriesThe
officer, Roman Goris, has been charged with abuse of power and using
stop-and-frisk without legal authority. The charges stem from an incident two
years ago in which Goris detained and issued disorderly conduct summonses to a
man for what seems like his snarky comments.
On December 23, 2011, Goris and
two other officers approached Yahnick Martin, a 35-year-old, black, real estate
broker who was smoking a cigar on a Brooklyn sidewalk, waiting for his wife to
finish delivering Christmas presents. The officers accused Martin of smelling
like marijuana and said they would need to search his pockets. According to
the New York Daily News, Martin did not
take kindly to the accusation:
"OK. I'll put my hands up
but this is really bulls--t," Martin says he told them. Goris pulled out
his wallet and lighter, and finding nothing else, handed them back to Martin
and started to walk away.
Martin says he [sarcastically]
quipped, "Where's the $100 that was in my pocket?"
Goris wasn't amused, court
papers say. He started arguing with the married dad, who then asked him for his
name and shield number. "You want to be a smartass and make accusations,
you're going to jail," another of the officers allegedly responded.
Goris, 33, then handcuffed him
"very tightly" and they took him to the 77th Precinct, court papers
say.
As he was being hauled off,
Martin says he asked the officers to wait until his wife came back to their
unlocked car, which was filled with Christmas gifts and had been left running
with the keys in the ignition. According to the lawsuit, an officer allegedly
told him, “That’s too bad, you should have thought of that before being a
smartass."
When Martin was allowed to
return to the scene — after being issued two disorderly conduct summonses that
were eventually dropped — his car and gifts were gone.
Police recovered Martin's van
several weeks later, but by that time, the thief had stolen the presents and
ran up charges on Martin's wife's credit card. Additionally, the van rental
company charged him $800 for damage to the vehicle.
Martin is suing Goris and the
NYPD for $2 million in damages.
In addition to Martin's
lawsuit, Goris may actually be disciplined for his alleged misconduct. This is
a result of a city agreement reached last year that gives the CCRB the
authority to prosecute in police misconduct trials.
The CCRB is an all-civilian
board tasked with investigating complaints about alleged misconduct among NYPD
officers. For two decades, the organization was charged exclusively with
substantiating complaints for legitimacy and issuing recommendations to the
NYPD for how the offending officers should be prosecuted or disciplined.
Critics had called the CCRB's
power to effectively punish police misconduct into question. According to
studies, the majority of police misconduct allegations against the NYPD do not
result in trials. Of the substantiated complaints that do reach trial, few are
prosecuted and judges often dole out lighter punishments than those
recommended.
Following the city agreement
though, the CCRB will likely try to increase the rate at which substantiated
claims are prosecuted. Their new prosecutorial unit started receiving cases in
April and has its first trials scheduled for this month.
However, the trials still use a
judge employed by the police department and the NYPD Commissioner gets the
final say in all verdicts. With this power, the police department still gets to
issue the ultimate ruling in officer misconduct cases.
