No rap for officer in beach beat
A COP FIRED after he was accused of orchestrating his own shooting sued and got job back — but he won’t rest until he gets his gun and is allowed to return to patrol duty, the Daily News has learned.
The NYPD, however, appears determined to keep Officer Brian O’Byrne behind a desk, doing administrative work at a Housing Bureau station in Harlem, even though he has full-duty status — and it won’t even give him a department-issued smartphone, according to a lawsuit filed by the 14-year veteran.
The bizarre tale includes a stunning revelation that O’Byrne survived two accidental shootings and a possible third shooting while growing up in Kentucky and Tennessee.
O’Byrne, who joined the NYPD in 2004, was assigned to the 81st Precinct in BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn, when, on Aug. 8, 2009, he was shot in his bullet-resistant vest at 3:30 a.m. while taking a break outside in the stationhouse parking lot. Or maybe not. According to police sources, internal reports and court documents, the NYPD was so suspicious from the get-go that it never notified the media, which it always does when an officer is fired upon and hit.
“You mean the guy who claims he was shot?’’ one investigator said when asked about the incident. “We never believed him.”
O’Byrne acknowledged those suspicions in court papers, noting that from the moment he reported getting shot he “was treated as a suspect (by) the supervisory staff and Internal Affairs Bureau called to the scene, rather than as the victim he was.”
Despite a bruise to his chest, he was, he said in court documents, “officially blamed for the incident and had to defend himself against the accusations even though he was never actually charged with the shooting.”
There were reasons for the NYPD’s suspicions, namely the evidence — or lack thereof, meaning no eyewitnesses and no one who heard a shot.
Also, the investigator said, it would have been impossible, “based on where he said he was sitting in the lot to have been shot at the angle that the projectile entered the vest.”
The vest, which had ballistic damage from the bullet, also had an unexplained cut.
And, according to sources, internal reports and court documents, a .22-caliber shell casing in his shirt pocket “was consistent with the bullet fragments recovered from the vest,” Deputy Inspector Philip Romanzi of Internal Affairs said in a report at the time.
Worse for O’Byrne, Romanzi said police determined there was a “ballistic match” between the casing and a rifle kept in the Long Island home of O’Byrne’s father.
Sources said investigators suspected, but could never prove, that O’Byrne, while off-duty, shot his vest, then took it to work — or arranged for someone to pull the trigger, though no clear motive was ever established.
O’Byrne, who hunted rabbit with the rifle, told Internal Affairs he kept the casing in his pocket because he intended to use it again.
He was suspended 30 days without pay and slapped with administrative charges. He beat the rap that he impeded the investigation but was found guilty by a NYPD trials commissioner of carrying a duplicate shield and of refusing to sign a release.
The recommended penalty was to be placed on dismissal probation for a year. Instead, then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly decertified O’Byrne and fired him in June 2013, accusing him of committing fraud on his NYPD application by not disclosing three unusual medical incidents in his life.
At age 12, while living in Kentucky, O’Byrne said that his cousin accidentally shot him in the back during target practice, according to an internal report. O’Byrne suffered a flesh wound — but didn’t see a doctor.
A year later while living in Tennessee, O’Byrne said he accidentally shot himself in the foot while cleaning a rifle.
Then, at age 17, he ran from a fight outside a nightclub after hearing what he thought could be gunshots, fell and saw he had cut his knee. Unsure if he was shot, he was treated at an outpatient facility, where he said he had been hurt in a car accident.
After getting fired, O’Byrne sued and won his job back in May 2016. The judge ruled O’Byrne “clearly and definitively” did not commit fraud and that his service record — including five Cop of the Month awards and 12 citations — benefited the NYPD.
But after being re-instated, Police Commissioner James O’Neill moved on the earlier disciplinary case involving the duplicate shield and the medical release form, signing off on the guilty findings.
The embattled officer was then placed on disciplinary monitoring in February 2017.
O’Byrne, of Westchester County, referred the Daily News to his lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Remarkably, there is a fifth shooting connected to O’Byrne.
In 2007, a rooftop shooter in Bedford-Stuyvesant struck O’Byrne in the arm with a BB or pellet while he was in his patrol car. O’Byrne later told The News the person should turn himself in “and face the music.” THE NEW JERSEY officer who was caught on video pummeling a young woman in the head in front of her baby daughter won’t face criminal charges, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The shocking May 26 beach arrest of Emily Weinman was first flagged in a viral Twitter video showing three Wildwood officers holding down the 20-year-old Philadelphia resident before one of them punched her in the head.
Weinman’s arrest was the result of her being spotted with a beer.
The video prompted outrage, with some viewers blasting it as another case of police brutality. But Cape May County Prosecutor Jeffrey Sutherland concluded the officers’ conduct did not warrant criminal charges.
Bodycam footage released by the Wildwood Police Department last week failed to show Weinman kicking one of the officers in the groin, which Mayor Ernie Troiano had previously said justified the use of force.
Troiano — who later said the kick was not caught on video because the officer’s bodycam was temporarily turned off — told the Daily News on Tuesdaythat Sutherland’s findings were “appropriate.”
“Hopefully this will put rest,” Troiano said. it to