$140G for man hurt by Finest

The NYPD exonerated a detective who fractured a Brooklyn drug suspect’s ribs, but the city later paid $140,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the suspect and his elderly mother.

The case came to light earlier this month when Federal Judge Raymond Dearie blasted the NYPD for not thoroughly investigating the narcotics detective, Orlen Zambrano, who racked up 31 complaints, 16 for excessive force, in his 10 years on the job.

Zambrano retired in 2015 after tearing a ligament in his leg while chasing someone. But there are still two pending lawsuits against him, including one, reported by the Daily News on Monday, involving another drug suspect, Matthew Jenkins, who said he was beaten while in custody and that the city should have been aware of the history of complaints against Zambrano.

Dearie (inset), responding to a motion by city lawyers who argued that Zambrano was not a rogue cop because none of the excessive force allegations against him had been substantiated, said the NYPD did little more than ask Zambrano if he did anything wrong before closing cases.

One of those cases involved Wayne Holiday, now 56, and his mother, Esther, now 81. They settled a lawsuit for $140,000 in 2013, two years after an incident near the family’s Bedford-Stuyvesant home on Jefferson Ave.

Holiday, who had 19 previous arrests, many related to drugs, was busted that day after he and another man took $40 from an undercover officer and walked off, buying beer with it instead of selling him crack, according to police documents.

Backup officers arrested both men, with Zambrano wrestling Holiday to the ground. Holiday, who pulled out a gravity knife during the scuffle, broke a rib and suffered cuts on his face, according to the documents.