Boardsquawk
Mouthy musician hits police in Coney suit
A STREET musician with a prosthetic leg is accusing an NYPD precinct commander of targeting him with summonses because he mouthed off to cops on the Coney Island Boardwalk.
Enrique Flores, 47, says he faced the wrath of NYPD Deputy Inspector William Taylor and several other officers when he told them, “This is why you motherf---ers keep getting shot.”
The police were slapping drink cups from the hands of a group of musicians and spectators on the Boardwalk when Flores made the remark, according to a pair of $200,000 lawsuits filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Flores, who lost his leg after a car hit him in 2014, was standing on a pair of crutches, playing the bongos as a crowd watched, when he first ran afoul of Taylor on March 25, 2016, he said.
Taylor, who commands the 60th Precinct, told the people to disperse.
Flores spoke out — telling Taylor and an unidentified sergeant that they were singling out Hispanics.
Flores said, “Why do you always harass us? This is why you motherf----rs keep getting shot,” according to his suit.
Moments later, he found his face pressed to the ground, slammed down by the sergeant and pinned down with a knee to the back.
“It’s gotta be a racial thing, because when he cuffed me, he tried to throw me over the rail,” Flores said. “I’m trying to tell him I have a prosthetic leg but he says, ‘I don’t give a f---’ and he slams me in the floor.”
Another man, Edwin Cosme, the former chairman of Community Board 13’s public safety committee, stood up for Flores, telling the officers that his remarks were “just an opinion” and not a threat, Cosme said in his own lawsuit.
“It was absolutely not a threat. He’s just got a big mouth,” said Rochelle Berliner, a lawyer who represents both men. “This Taylor guy doesn’t like Hispanics, doesn’t like people having fun.”
Taylor ordered Cosme cuffed as well, accusing him of drinking alcohol in public and littering. Cosme said he was drinking a bottle of nonalcoholic Malta India.
Cosme, who owns a hair salon in the neighborhood, described Taylor as “sort of a dictator.”
“It was his form of being a Robocop — whether you like it or not, you’re gonna have to swallow it,” Cosme said. “So I spoke up against that.”
Taylor has a reputation for cleaning up the Boardwalk, but “he’s doing it at the expense of the people who live there and enjoy it,” Berliner said. “He completely alienates that community he’s supposed to be protecting.”
Flores got a disorderly conduct summons, and pleaded guilty on June 23, 2016, the lawsuit claims. Cosme took his case to trial the same day, and the charges against him were dismissed.
Since then, he’s been denied sound permits for most of the events he plans in the community, he said.
The NYPD declined comment, referring all questions to the city Law Department.