Prosecutors push DA on cop brutality
More than 50 Bronx prosecutors called on District Attorney Darcel Clark to do more to combat police brutality in the borough, according to a letter obtained by the Daily News Tuesday.
The assistant district attorneys panned the NYPD’s response to the mostly peaceful protests that gripped the city in late May and early June after the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd.
“The NYPD heard our city asking police to stop killing black people and responded with more force and violence than many of us, privileged or not, have ever witnessed firsthand,” the group of about 30 named and 20 anonymous prosecutors wrote to Clark (inset). “We are asking you to speak out against police brutality and assert this office’s dedication to holding police accountable for the crimes they commit against the people we are sworn to protect.”
The group specifically highlighted a few instances of police violence, including “violent mass arrests like the one that took place in the Bronx on the evening of June 4, 2020.”
One immediate reform the assistant district attorneys called for was clearer procedure on how to handle police misconduct in the “complaint room,” when prosecutors interview police officers after arrests.
“Nearly every ADA represented in this letter has encountered an incident in the complaint room where an officer has used unwarranted force,” they wrote. “These interactions do little to either rectify violence that has already taken place or prevent future violent arrests.”
“The office should institute clear procedures and guidance for identifying and handling police misconduct, violent arrests and unconstitutional practices so these one-on-one interactions with police, in aggregate, become a meaningful part of [Bronx district attorney’s] unified response to police brutality,” the prosecutors wrote.
They also noted that the office is currently “complicit” in a “broken system,” which allows police brutality.
In a statement Tuesday night, Clark said, “Our office is open to dialogue about the work we do and how we serve the community. I encourage and appreciate input from staff.”
A deranged recidivist sex offender with a stunning 103 prior arrests was busted Tuesday for randomly stiff-arming a 92-year-old Manhattan woman to the sidewalk — with the terrified victim now afraid to step outside.
The victim, speaking inside her studio apartment near Gramercy Park, said she’s too frightened to leave her apartment since the man with a triple-digit rap sheet targeted her last Friday.
“I have been all around the city, I go on my own, I live alone,” said the retired city schoolteacher, fighting off tears. “I never even think in terms I’m going to be assaulted. I’ve felt very safe in the city. And now, forget it. I’m afraid to go out.”
Oft-arrested Rashid Brimmage, released with desk appearance tickets following three separate assault arrests since Feb. 4, was still a free man before he was busted Tuesday at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island based on a phoned-in tip to cops.
The 31-year-old suspect’s crime career includes arrests for sexual abuse and groping women on the subway, public lewdness, harassment, sex abuse, criminal trespass and criminal possession of marijuana.
On March 9, he punched a man in the face for no reason outside a Harlem pizzeria, cops said. He had previously punched two other people in the face without provocation in separate February incidents, police said. He was also accused of stealing $120 from a 60-year-old woman in the E. 116th St. subway station four months ago.
Word of his arrest Tuesday did little to calm the rattled nerves of the victim, a full six decades older than her attacker. “I was never scared of anything. Oh, I am scared of that guy,” she told the Daily News. “Look, I’m 92 now. Maybe I’ll live to 100. It’d be nice to live to 100, but I want to be able to enjoy it.”
Brimmage, who was living on the street before his arrest, was wearing the same shorts when taken into custody as he was sporting in the security video of the attack released by cops, sources told The News.
The video shows the elderly victim, strolling along Third Ave. to a nearby Duane Reade, her thin hands gripping the shopping cart that she uses as a walking aid.
As she passed the stranger, he reached out and shoved her head — sending her sprawling to the sidewalk, with her head clipping a fire hydrant as the assailant sauntered away.
The victim recounted how her world turned instantly into a very scary place.
“You’re knocking down elderly people and then, do you feel some joy from that?” the victim asked. “Look what’s happened to me. You’ve changed my life. I think I’ve been a happy, liberal person, and now you’ve changed, absolutely changed that whole view.”
The victim was a public school teacher in the South Bronx and lower Manhattan until her 1984 retirement. She was treated at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and has bounced back physically — but remains emotionally scarred.
“I went out yesterday just to go to the drugstore,” she recalled Tuesday. “I looked behind me, and I hesitated, and I saw somebody and I waited for them to pass. So I cannot go out alone now.”
She turned to her building superintendent in hopes of finding someone who would accompany her on shopping trips for a few dollars. “The super said he’d try to find somebody,” she said.
She has no intention of making the short trip to the store — or any trip, for that matter — by herself any more.
She’s hopeful the world can return to some semblance of normalcy if the suspect is convicted and jailed. “I won’t be fully relieved until he is behind bars, though,” she said. “Not just a slap on the wrist.”