BX. FAMILY TERRORIZED BY FEDS
A group of federal marshals acted like a gang of “lawless thugs,” terrorizing a family in a Bronx housing project for hours last year as they searched for a man on a relatively minor weapons possession charge, according to an explosive lawsuit filed in Manhattan on Wednesday.
The marshals, with guns drawn, initially told Elvayaris Rosa that the friend she was riding with earlier in the day murdered a police officer, and that she was aiding and abetting a cop killer, the suit said.
But days after Rosa says she was handcuffed in the backseat of her car, and her brother and two children were terrorized by officers who stormed her apartment without a warrant, she learned that the friend they sought had surrendered on a mere weapons-possession charge — the day after government agents informed him there was a warrant for his arrest.
There was no murder, the lawsuit said. The marshals had lied.
“They were telling me I was a criminal,” Rosa told the Daily News.” They were going to take my kids away. Cursing me out. ‘We’re going to take all that s—t away from you.’”
Rosa said she sat helplessly in the car with cuffs behind her back that cut into her wrists.
“I asked them to go to the bathroom,” Rosa said. “They said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Why not? You have me arrested already They said, ‘Pee on yourself.’”
But that was the least of their transgressions, according to papers filed Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court.
As single mother Rosa sat handcuffed in a car March 2, 2018, marshals punched, kicked and beat her brother, forced him to sit on a pipinghot radiator, threatened to kill him and browbeat her 4and 9-year-old children, the suit said.
“We can do whatever we want. We’re the feds,” marshals allegedly shouted at Rosa’s brother, Gregorio Santos, who was watching Rosa’s kids while she was out. “We don’t need a warrant.”
Other threats included, “I should kill you right now,” “You’re lucky I don’t pull out my gun and shoot you,” “There are seven of us, one of you. Who’s the judge going to believe?” and “We’re the federal government – we can do whatever the f—k we want,” according to the court docs.
And for several hours, that’s exactly what they did, the suit said. And this alleged violation of civil rights and abrogation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment all happened in the city’s Sonia Sotomayor Houses, the NYCHA apartments named for the U.S. Supreme Court justice who grew up there.
“These marshals acted like some sort of lawless gang,” said Rosa’s attorney,” Ilann Maazel. “It’s appalling. Would this happen on Park Ave.? Never. But in the Bronx, there is no justice even in the former residence of a Supreme Court justice. This should never happen in America, anywhere.”
A U.S. Marshals spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Rosa said she and Santos are still nursing injuries, and her children have been traumatized and are afraid to leave their home.
“All I want is for them to know that what they did was wrong,” Rosa said of the lawsuit. “That’s why I did this. I know this happens to other people and they stay quiet, and they stay scared.”