Suit spotlights AC police brutality complaints


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge is raising questions about the Atlantic City police department's handling of brutality complaints against its officers.
U.S. District Judge Joel Schneider in Camden is presiding over a 2010 excessive-force lawsuit against two Atlantic City officers who have faced nearly 80 complaints between them. None has been upheld by the department's internal affairs.
The city previously provided summaries of the complaints against the officers, Sgt. Frank Timek and Officer Sterling Wheaten. But the judge has ordered the city to turn over the full internal affairs reports, The Press of Atlantic City (http://bit.ly/18izzKU ) reported.
The judge said the reports are needed to determine if the city has been, as alleged, "deliberately indifferent to the violent propensities of its police officers."
He noted that no complaints against Timek and Wheaten were ever upheld in internal affairs investigations even though the two "regularly appear in this court as defendants ... in excessive force cases, several of which are remarkably similar to the instant one."
Beyond the allegations made against the two officers, Schneider noted, not one of hundreds of excessive force complaints against any city police has been upheld through internal review.
The city police union's president, Paul Barbere, said it's wrong to judge the officers by the number of complaints received. He called such complaints an occupational hazard for officers and the work of defendants looking to improve their chances in court.
In the case now in federal court, Matthew Groark alleges that he and his girlfriend were at a nightclub at Caesars Atlantic City on Aug. 7, 2010, when they approached Wheaten and Timek, who were working a security detail there, for assistance.
When the officers shined a light in the couples' eyes, Groark said, he asked why and then alleges he was thrown down the stairs, punched and kneed by the officers. He alleges the attack was unprovoked, and that he then was charged with obstruction of justice, resisting arrest and aggravated assault.
Court records show Groark has no criminal record and that the 2010 charges were dismissed.
Timek had 52 complaints filed against him over 11 years, and Wheaten had 26 over nearly four years, the summaries of the cases against them showed.