Data show 87 lawsuits filed against 14 NYPD officers in

It was a warm August night in Flatbush in 2018 when Michael Demas and his steel drum band were performing in a vacant lot at an impromptu gathering of Caribbean music fans.

And then an NYPD sergeant with a history of faulty arrests showed up and ruined the fun.

Accusing the event organizers of selling liquor without a license, Sgt. Alan Chau of the 67th Precinct ordered his cops to arrest six people, including

Demas, 60, the band’s leader. Demas, according to a complaint he later filed against the city, was held for nearly 48 hours and eventually agreed to an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.

“I have no idea how they picked me out,” Demas said. “We were just trying to showcase our culture and [police] came and disrespected us. It was very humiliating,” he added. “It makes you not want to be in America anymore.”

The city has yet to respond to the lawsuit that Demas filed in 2019, but it turns out that Chau heads the list of the

NYPD’s most frequently sued officers over the past two years, court records show. Lawsuits were brought against him 14 times in 2018 and 2019, according to records compiled by the Legal Aid Society and obtained by the Daily News. Of the 627 arrests he was involved in, records show that 393 were dismissed, or 63%.

Chau is just one of 14 officers who have been sued a total of 87 times in that two-year span, records show. The Legal Aid data don’t include cases settled out of court, which would add hundreds more cases to the list, the society said.

A common thread in the lawsuits is they almost all involve low-level busts that were eventually dismissed, Legal Aid lawyers said. In most of the cases, the people arrested were subjected to spending 24 to 48 hours in jail and then months of waiting for their cases to be adjudicated. In some cases, people lost their jobs because they repeatedly had to miss work, according to the society.

Seven of the lawsuits naming Chau, 38, involved him ordering people arrested for allegedly selling alcohol without a license during neighborhood events related to Caribbean holidays and cultural events.

“In most cases, they aren’t actually selling alcohol. [The police] seem to go in and just round people up,” said Demas’ lawyer, Abraham RubertSchewel. “People are being forced to spend the night in jail for something that turns out to be nothing.”

In another 2018 case, Chau allegedly forced his way into the Flatbush apartment of Frances Babb, 63, early in the morning of Jan. 14, court records show. Chau arrested Babb’s grandson for suppos