An officer said his colleague rammed a baton into Mineo’s rectum ""I would say a half inch to an inch was out of sight." Mineo had to be hospitalized for his internal injuries. His DNA was also found on Officer Kern’s baton. Mineo has filed a $440 million lawsuit.
[Speaking Truth To Power]
The New York Police Department has to address the issue of sodomy abuse and torture within its ranks.
Perhaps the case of disgraced Officer Justin Volpe who violated Abner Louima in 1997 with a plunger handle was no abberation?
Consider the current case in which transit Officer Kevin Maloney has just testified in court.
Monday, Maloney, 27, testified in Brooklyn State Supreme Court to witnessing Officer Richard Kern sodomizing a civilian, Michael Mineo, on Oct. 15, 2008, in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park subway station, while Mineo was being arrested for smoking pot. Maloney testified that Officer Kern “pressed” his retractable baton “on Michael Mineo’s left buttock.”
Maloney demonstrated for jurors how Officer Kern used the baton to brutalize Mineo which he said penetrated Mineo. He said the baton was forced into Mineo’s rectum “”I would say a half inch to an inch was out of sight.” Mineo had to be hospitalized for his internal injuries. His DNA was also found on Kern’s baton. Mineo has filed a $440 million lawsuit.
Maloney’s testimony seems to corroborate earlier accusations of Mineo, who said Officer Kern shoved the baton into his rectum four times, while another officer joked about it saying “You liked it.”
Two other officers, Andrew Morales, 27, and Alex Cruz, 28, have been charged with covering up the incident. Mineo said he was released with a summons and warned not to seek medical attention and to keep quiet. He alleges an officer told him “We have your address–We’ll find you and put a felony on you.”
Mineo testified he was going to work, at a tattoo parlor, when cops in an unmarked car saw him smoking a marijuana joint. Mineo who was on bail for an earlier charge, bolted and was chased down by Kern and other officers who formed a “circle” and kicked him “all over.” He alleges, after the assault, when he asked the officers to call an ambulance one told him “We can’t do that.”
Shooting Black men dead with 50 shots, drunken officers running over grandmothers or young ladies in the streets of New York, and cops sodomizing men? What’s going on in the NYPD?
There’s something very sick at work here. Mineo’s story harks to 1997, when Louima was assaulted by Officer Volpe. In that case, Louima, a Haitian, was sodomized in the 70 Precinct, after having been arrested outside Brooklyn’s Club Rendez-Vous, in East Flatbush. Louima who was beaten by several officers was sodomized by Officer Volpe who bragged he had “broke a man down.”
Volpe attacked Louima, reportedly, with the help of Officer Steven Schwartz, in the precinct bathroom. Volpe pled guilty receiving a 30-year sentence. History suggests the attack on Louima may’ve been prevented if one brave reporter’s work had been given the light of day and had the NYPD investigated the issue of sodomy torture.
Around April, of 1994, legendary reporter and barrier-breaking columnist Earl Caldwell discovered a shocking, emerging story regarding several Haitian cab drivers in New York: all alleged they’d been sodomized by an NYPD officer. Caldwell, who covered the Black Panther Party, and was the lone reporter on the scene when Martin Luther King was killed, examined polygraph tests and other evidence that suggested the drivers were telling an awful truth.
Unfortunately, Caldwell’s editors, at the New York Daily News, refused to back his findings, effectively killing the story and silencing the crimes of that cop. It was yet another example of the failure of American journalism to publish a truly important story. Caldwell was eventually removed from his position at the Daily News.
Caldwell is currently an esteemed professor in Hampton University’s Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications and is the host of the Caldwell Chronicle on WBAI Radio, in New York. Question: if the Daily News editors had stood up for the hallowed principles journalism is supposed to stand for, isn’t it conceivable the outrage done to Louima—and by extension to Mineo—could’ve been prevented? An opportunity was lost to spotlight this form of sadism within the NYPD.
As is the case too often, the crimes of a criminal masquerading in NYPD Blue were concealed. The same awful crime has manifested again. Far too long now criminal behavior has been tolerated within the NYPD, especially if the victims of these crimes are people of color. What will City Hall do about this scourge of criminality perpetrated by rogue cops?
Presently, those in defense of Officer Kern have done much to demean Mineo citing his rap sheet. In light of this week’s damning testimony by Officer Maloney, are they really telling us that if a citizen has a record he has no rights against a cop’s sodomy abuse? The outrages here are too numerous to mention. The bright spot is: Officer Kevin Maloney, apparently, searched his conscience and decided to do the lawful thing and crack the Blue Wall by exposing this sadist.
Maybe he wanted to protect another officer whom he believed was being wrongfully blamed. Still, he opened his mouth.
However people of color, in New York City, must effectively lobby those in City Hall, and the political establishment, who’ve so devalued and criminalized people of color legislatively and judicially. They’re the ones who spawn and sanction the actions of officers like Justin Volpe and Richard Kern.
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“Speaking Truth To Empower.”
