Cuffed while cutting classes
THREE PLAINCLOTHES cops pulled up to Logan St. and Hegeman Ave. in a black Chevy Impala and locked eyes with 14-year-old Melvin Rosel, who had cut high school classes for the day and was outside a friend’s apartment. “I saw them and they saw me,” Rosel said from Allentown, Pa., where he now lives. The officers, including David Grieco, ran him down, cuffed him and put him in a headlock, demanding to know if he had a gun on him — or drugs, Rosel said.
When he got home and his mom saw the cuff marks on his wrist, she called the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The officers told the CCRB that Rosel tugged at his waistband in a way that suggested he had a gun as the three cops approached him. But the CCRB didn’t buy it. There was “no reasonable suspicion that he was armed,” investigators said, according to CCRB records. Nor was there an emergency to justify entry.
“You don’t have to be so aggressive,” Melvin’s mom, Mabel Barreto said. “They’re treating people like animals.”
The officers declined to comment to The News.