Chang W. Lee/The New York Times - Justice Thomas D. Raffaele said a police officer in Queens, enraged at a jeering crowd, hit him in the throat on Friday.

ATH - Yet another case of the NYPD out of control.  Even this 69-year-old white Judge couldn't escape this dysfunctional police force that believes it can do anything it wants and get away with it.  If this Judge was just a regular citizen he would likely be facing charges of disorderly conduct of trying to assualt an officer.

NY Times - Thomas D. Raffaele, a 69-year-old justice of the New York State Supreme Court, encountered a chaotic scene while walking down a Queens street with a friend: Two uniformed police officers stood over a shirtless man lying facedown on the pavement. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back and he was screaming. A crowd jeered at the officers.

The judge, concerned the crowd was becoming unruly, called 911 and reported that the officers needed help.

But within minutes, he said, one of the two officers became enraged — and the judge became his target. The officer screamed and cursed at the onlookers, some of whom were complaining about what they said was his violent treatment of the suspect, and then he focused on Justice Raffaele, who was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The judge said the officer rushed forward and, using the upper edge of his hand, delivered a sharp blow to the judge’s throat that was like what he learned when he was trained in hand-to-hand combat in the Army.

The episode, Friday morning just after midnight — in which the judge says his initial complaint about the officer was dismissed by a sergeant, the ranking supervisor at the scene — is now the focus of investigations by the police Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

The judge said he believed the officer also hit one or two other people during the encounter on 74th Street near 37th Road, a busy commercial strip in Jackson Heights. But he said he could not be sure, because the blow to his throat sent him reeling back and he then doubled over in pain.

“I’ve always had profound respect for what they do,” Justice Raffaele said of the police, noting that he was “always very supportive” of the department during the more than 20 years he served on Community Board 3 in Jackson Heights before becoming a judge. At one point in the early 1990s, he added, he helped organize a civilian patrol in conjunction with the police. “And this I thought was very destructive.”

Read Full Story at NY Times

NYPD strikes again, brutally beating a Bronx Teen, Jatiek Reed, 19, last week.  The incident was caught on video and is another example of a Police department that is out of control and brutalizing our communties.  Even Police Commissioner Ray Kelly who almost never admits any wrong doing on behalf of the NYPD stated that, "the video was disturbing."  The officers in the video were also stripped of their guns for the time being and put on desk duty while NYPD investigates the incident internally.  This incident and the filming of it further empasizes the importance of citizens taking out their cameras and monitoring police activity.  If this video had not come out this would just be another everyday case of the police officers word verse the victims word.  All Things Harlem urges our viewers to please film police activity in our communities. 

Watch Full Video

Man who witnessed video from his fire escape also punched and attacked by NYPD in attempts to silence him.

NY1 - Report by Dean Meminger

NY1 - As the New York City Police Department has placed police officers involved with a violent arrest in the Bronx last week on modified duty, an eyewitness to the incident claims those same officers immediately went after him. NY1's Criminal Justice reporter Dean Meminger filed the following report.

Family Members of Jatiek Reed want the officers in the video charge with a crime.

NY1 - Report by Dean Meminger

NY1 - The Bronx man who says a video posted to YouTube proves that he was brutalized by several police officers appeared in court Wednesday, and his family is calling for charges to be brought against the officers involved in the incident. NY1’s Dean Meminger filed the following report.