On June 5, a United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York issued a ruling criticizing the NYPD for disinterested and meaningless internal investigations. A trial in that case against an officer accused of beating our client, Matthew Jenkins so badly that he suffered a traumatic brain injury is scheduled for September of this year. The City of New York is also a defendant, based on evidence that the NYPD’s investigative practices with respect to the defendant officer were so lax, so superficial, as to make the City liable for the violation of Mr. Jenkins’ constitutional right to be free from excessive force. The Memorandum and Decision follows below. Today’s Daily News also has a short piece on the decision.
As set out in the decision, reproduced below, on October 13, 2012, our client, Matthew Jenkins, was arrested in Brooklyn on a routine drug charge. The arresting officers claimed — wrongly — that Mr. Jenkins had swallowed crack cocaine, and he was taken to the hospital for a stomach scan. While at the hospital, and handcuffed to a gurney, he was violently assaulted by a Det. Orlen Zambrano, who beat Mr. Jenkins so badly that he suffered a subdural hematoma (a brain bleed). That injury has caused Mr. Jenkins to suffer numerous seizures, and he is now diagnosed with a seizure disorder, for which he will have to treat for the rest of his life.
What is perhaps most shocking about this event is that Det. Zambrano had already been the subject of 15 different excessive force complaints in the six years leading up to his assault of Mr. Jenkins. Yet, not once did the NYPD undertake any meaningful investigation into Det. Zambrano, or alter the way he was supervised. Time and again he would deny the allegations, and time and again the NYPD would announce there was no way to resolve the allegations. The facts of this case underscore the NYPD’s bad faith approach to claims of misconduct. As the Court points out, the NYPD appears to take action only when it must, which is to say, when the evidence is so overwhelming that it is politically impossible to ignore.
A trial in this case is scheduled for September 16 of this year. We are looking forward to it