Cop’s had past trouble
Lt. faced 20 complaints before recent driver-beat accusation
An NYPD lieutenant who allegedly kicked and hit a motorist accused of leading cops on a 107 mph chase has made hundreds of arrests in his career — and drawn 20 civilian complaints and six lawsuits that cost the city nearly $200,000 in settlements, records show.
Lt. Nikolaos Stefopoulos is under investigation for allegedly assaulting Brian Marchany, 25.
At around 1:15 a.m. Thursday, authorities said, Marchany tried to speed away from officers on the FDR Drive, leading them down the East Side, through the Battery Park Underpass and then up the West Side before he finally crashed at Chruch Ave. and Park Place in Tribeca. A criminal complaint put the speed of his flight at between 80 mph and 107 mph.
At the end of the pursuit, after Stefopoulos apparently kicked him, Marchany suffered an apparent seizure and vomited, the video shows.
Marchany was accused in Manhattan Criminal Court of evidence tampering, drug possession, resisting arrest and reckless endangerment. At his arraignment Friday, he could not remember his own phone number.
“The video speaks for itself — I came out with my hands up and he pistol-whipped me and kicked me in the head and I had a seizure and suffered a concussion,” Marchany said. “I have no recollection of what happened from the moment I stepped out of the car. I just remember waking up in the ICU with a breathing tube and a catheter.”
Added his girlfriend, Tiffany Victor, 25, who was also in the car, “It was brutal, unnecessary force.”
In all, he spent two-and-a-half days in the hospital.
The NYPD said an internal review of the incident is ongoing.
As a member of the Citywide Community Response Team, which goes after illegal firearms and vehicle crimes, Stefopoulos has been featured at least seven times on Chief of Patrol John Chell’s page on X, formerly known as Twitter, for his work on gun arrests.
“We’re not playing defense — we’re playing offense,” Chell said of the unit in July.
A cop since 2007, Stefopoulos previously worked in anti-crime and narcotics units, and the counter-terror Strategic Response Group. He has made 273 misdemeanor arrests and 144 felony arrests during his career.
“He’s taken numerous guns off the street. Each one of those guns was intended to take a life. He has saved countless lives doing so,” said Lou Turco, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association.
In 2019, Stefopoulos was off-duty driving to work when he was rear-ended by delivery man Michael Newman, who was working for Staten Island’s Villa Monte Pizzeria, court records show. He claimed he hurt his back and sued the lowly delivery man for $10 million, the records show.
During a deposition, Stefopoulos testified he joined the NYPD right out of the College of Staten Island.
He said he had been injured three times as a cop. He hurt his thumb wrestling with one suspect, got bitten on the forearm by another and “tweaked his back” while swinging a battering ram to knock down a door.
He testified the car accident forced him to reduce his time in the gym, but didn’t cause him to miss any time at work. “I can’t dead lift. I can’t squat,” he testified. “I can’t do anything involving my lower back.”
The case was settled in 2021 for undisclosed terms, court records indicate.
After a stint in patrol, Stefopoulos worked in a plainclothes anti-crime unit in the 123rd Precinct in Staten Island, where he focused on crime hot spots, he testified. In 2017, he was reassigned to a Staten Island narcotics unit, where he served until June 2019.
He was then reassigned to the Strategic Response Group. In the fender-bender case, he described SRG work as, “No enforcement. No real crime fighting. Most of the time I just drive around and inspect other posts.”
He was promoted to lieutenant on Sept. 30, 2022 and assigned to the Community Response Team on July 28, 2023, records show.
The lieutenant has been a named defendant in at least six lawsuits filed between 2014 and 2018 with settlements totaling $198,001, records show.
The highest settlement came in 2020, when the city paid $125,000 to Michael Skolnick, a Staten Island man who alleged Stefopoulos and other Staten Island narcotics officers falsely arrested him in 2014 as retaliation for Skolnick filing a civilian complaint.
On Sept. 23, 2014, three officers, not including Stefopolous, illegally stopped Skolnick at Willowbrook Ave. and Forest Ave. in Port Richmond, records show. They pulled him out of his car and threatened him.
Skolnick filed a civilian complaint on Oct. 14, 2013. Then, two months later, on Dec. 19, 2014, he was outside his car in Midland Beach when he was stopped and questioned by Stefopoulos and two other officers.
They confiscated his medication, wallet and cell phone. They searched his car without his permission and arrested him on drug possession charges which were dismissed.
“The actions of Stefopoulos (and the two other officers) were undertaken in retaliation for (Skolnick) having filed a civilian complaint,” the lawsuit alleged.
The city denied the allegations, but settled the case.
He has also faced department charges in the NYPD trial room at least twice, but was found not guilty in each case.
In one case, he was accused of repeatedly punching a 16-year-old boy in August 2014 during a “buy-andbust” operation on Staten Island and shouting “Open your f—— hand before I crush you” and “Shut the f— up, dude, you’re an idiot,” records show.
NYPD judge Paul Gamble found the force reasonable and the comments within guidelines as an attempt to get the suspect to comply.
Of 20 civilian complaints filed against Stefopoulos prior to 2023, six were substantiated.
Marchany — who served two months in jail on stalking and grand larceny charges for harassing and extorting $15,000 from a man who refused to give him a job — said he and Victor were headed to a Mexican restaurant early Thursday when they encountered the officers on FDR Drive in an unmarked navy blue Dodge with tinted windows.
Marchany’s lawyer Nicholas Ramcharitar said his client had no idea they were cops. Marchany claimed the Dodge Charger paralleled them for awhile with its lights off. “It was like they were racing us,” Marchany said.
An NYPD spokesman alleged in a statement Friday that Marchany swallowed drugs right after he crashed, possibly causing the seizure.
Victor said Marchany didn’t swallow anything. Ramcharitar said there’s no indication from the hospital that Marchany, a fitness instructor, ingested drugs or that the seizure was caused by drugs.
“He was perfectly sober,” Ramcharitar said. “Marchany having a seizure was a direct result of that NYPD officer stomping on Mr. Marchany’s head without cause.”
At arraignment, a judge placed Marchany on supervised release.