COP VIDEO DEFENSE
Footage ‘helps’ fighting officer
Here’s a city cop who should actually be glad there was videotape.
An NYPD officer caught on cellphone footage trying to subdue a knifewielding Harlem man appears to have clearly followed protocol, sources told The Post on Friday.
“The video actually helps the cop,” said a source familiar with the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau probe into Officer Jean Francisco.
“The perp was told to place his hands behind his back, and he adamantly refused. He was demonstrating active physical resisting,” the source said.
Another police source said the footage shows Francisco was not the aggressor and that he remained in a “defensive stance” while under attack from suspect Saykou George, 30.
George repeatedly shoved Francisco and slugged him in the face, causing pain and swelling, during the confrontation, the source said.
The officer also suffered a broken leg, the source said.
In terms of the IAB probe, Francisco “will be OK — I don’t see discipline being handed down, but maybe a course of tactics,’’ a source said. For example, “once the man actively resisted, the officer would have been justified in using his [pepper] spray instead of fighting.”
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has already defended Francisco and the other officers involved in the arrest of George, who had two prior arrests and an outstanding against him.
“You have no right, no right under New York law, to resist arrest, which was going on, based on what I’m seeing in that video,” Bratton said after Wednesday’s attack.
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch hailed Francisco’s handling of George, a “textbook example” of how to take down a combative suspect.
Francisco and his female partner were on patrol at 3:15 p.m Wednesday when they spotted George carrying an illegal gravity knife at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 129th
warrant Street, sources said.
The cops confronted George about the knife and asked for his ID, which he turned over to Francisco.
At the same time, George became unruly, and a crowd of agitators gathered, with one man using his cellphone to film the altercation.
The video shows George flailing his arms and demanding Francisco give back his ID. Francisco is seen trying to reason with George, to no avail.
Then George assaults Francisco, igniting the fight between the two men while the officer’s partner calls for backup.
A swarm of cops swoops in and takes down George while the cameraman repeatedly stokes the flames by saying, “This is some bull! He stopped him for no fking reason!”
George has two prior arrests for assault and marijuana possession.