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NYC To Pay Over $600,000 In Police Brutality Case
NYC To Pay Over $600,000 In Police Brutality Case

NYC To Pay Over $600,000 In Police Brutality Case

NYC To Pay Over $600,000 In Police Brutality Case

New York City has agreed to pay more than $600,000 to settle the case of a man who said he was brutally beaten by police officers nearly five years ago.

The settlement comes from a 2012 incident, in which Jateik Reed (19 at the time) and two of his friends were stopped and frisked by officers on a sidewalk in the Bronx. Surveillance camera and cellphone footage of the encounter showed the officers kicking Reed, as well as striking him with batons. One officer also pepper sprayed one of Reed's friends, Trevor Nigel, who was filming the incident.

The New York Police Department initially claimed that the officers stopped Reed because they saw bags of weed in his hands. However, all possession charges were later dropped, and surveillance video showed that nothing was in Reed's hands at the time of the incident.

Four of the officers involved were disciplined internally but were not terminated. "They're still on the job," Gideon Orion Oliver, Reed's lawyer, said in an interview with Reuters. "Those are not the kinds of consequences that are going to lead to more accountability."

Reed's 2013 lawsuit against the NYPD was joined by his mother, two brothers — one only 4 at the time — and two friends involved in the incident. The lawsuit claimed that his mother, brother and a friend were improperly arrested when they went to the local precinct to inquire about Reed's condition.

The settlement includes a $480,000 payment to Reed, with an approximately $135,000 in additional payments to the other plaintiffs.

According to a document detailing the settlement, only two of the four officers involved have to contribute to the settlement payment: Robert Jaquez, who pepper sprayed Nigel, and Sergeant Alfousina Delacruz, who kicked Reed as he laid handcuffed on the ground. The former is expected to pay $500, while the latter will pay $5,000.

The remainder of the payment comes from New York City. A spokesman for the city's law department said the deal was "in the city's best interest." The city did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.