Penalty versus officer shrouded in secrecy

A Brooklyn cop lost 15 vacation days for using a banned chokehold on a teen for 30 seconds during a stop-and-frisk confrontation — a penalty shrouded in secrecy for more than six months, the Daily News has learned.

The troubling Aug.

27, 2016, incident in Bedford-Stuyvesant involved Officer David Mercado, who was accused of punching LaKee McKinney (inset) in the face, then pinning him against a utility pole and pressing his forearm into the teen’s neck for up to 30 seconds — an agonizing period during which the then-teen said he struggled to breathe, an NYPD administrative trial revealed.

The stop-and-frisk was triggered by a passerby’s description of a man with a gun. McKinney didn’t have a gun and wasn’t arrested.

Photos taken after McKinney filed a complaint showed bruises on his neck, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which prosecuted Mercado, said at the officer’s trial. A prosecutor called for him to lose up to 15 vacation days, a penalty an NYPD trial judge agreed with, and thenPolice Commissioner James O’Neill imposed. It wasn’t clear

Wednesday when O’Neill made that decision. He retired at the end of November, so for at least six months, the penalty remained a secret guarded by state law 50-a, which shields a cop’s disciplinary record from public view unless a judge says otherwise. Lawmakers voted this week to repeal 50-a, and the governor is expected to sign the bill.

That comes too late for McKinney, now a 22-year-old security guard who once wanted to be a cop. He says he wasn’t familiar with 50-a — and didn’t know Mercado had been punished.

According to McKinney, police allegedly hassled him when word got around that he’d filed a CCRB complaint against Mercado — sometimes driving down his block and making comments.

He said he’s been stopped about 15 times, and was once arrested for jaywalking — cutting across the street to avoid rats — while two white people doing the same thing got a pass. The case was expunged from his record, his mother said.

McKinney, who’s taken part in two George Floyd protests, said he’s seen friends who’ve become cops turn into different people. “Something in them changes,” he said.