Buffalo Officer Suspended After Video of Beating



BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A police officer is caught on camera by a TV news camera person early Thanksgiving Day hitting a man with a baton.


 Now, that officer is off the job and suspended without pay.
Night stick in hand, Officer Corey Krug walks down a Buffalo street early Thanksgiving morning confronting a man about to get into a fight.


Other officers rush over as Krug tells the man on the ground to get up. The video shows Krug striking the man on the ground with his baton several times.
Those other officers are telling Krug he is being recorded on camera.
A news photographer with 7 Eyewitness News was on scene and documented the altercation. He was following police officers on the job when he saw Krug hitting the man and then letting him walk away.
"They're telling this guy to walk away, so apparently, he did nothing," said Daire Irwin, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union.
He says in a situation like this, police officers would typically charge someone with a crime, but in this case, there was no arrest.
"I absolutely, categorically believe his civil rights were violated," Irwin said.
After 7 Eyewitness News showed the tape to Buffalo Police Commissioner Dan Derenda, Krug was suspended indefinitely without pay.
Derenda says he's reached out to both the FBI and the US Attorney's Office for a possible investigation into civil rights violations.
The police department is also doing its own investigation.
"I really can't comment on an internal investigation,” Derenda said. “What I will say is as it has shown, this administration takes inappropriate behavior very seriously and appropriate action was taken in each and every case."
7 Eyewitness News reports that Krug joins a list of at least 15 Buffalo police officers who have been charged, convicted or suspended since 2012.
The latest was Officer John Cirruli, who was convicted on civil rights violations after being caught on camera in April hitting and kicking John Willett.
Last year, Krug was named in a federal civil rights lawsuit from a 2010 arrest.
It's unclear where that case stands in federal court.
We've also discovered from a police source, Corey Krug is a relative of Officer Raymond Krug, who was charged with federal civil rights violations from a 2009 arrest.

"The vast majority of officers do the right thing each and every day,” Derenda said. “When officers don't do the right thing across the line, there's consequences, as we've shown in the past, we do what we have to do to take necessary action."