Party-crash cops face heat

A Brooklyn housing project resident says cops wrongly searched her apartment two years ago — almost exactly 14 years after NYPD officers shot dead her 19-year-old cousin.

Jacqueline Nixon claims that Deputy Inspector Jessie Lance (photo) and Lt. Omar Birchwood forced their way into her home on Sackman St. in the Seth Low Houses in Brownsville on Dec. 31, 2016, after several gunshots were fired outside.

Nixon, 57, said at the officers’ departmental trial Monday that she was spending her New Year’s Eve watching TV in her bedroom with her grandkids while a party went on her her kitchen.

The party was a memorial to her cousin, Jamal Nixon, who was killed early Jan. 1, 2003 by officers who saw him with a gun. A month before his death, Nixon, 19, was paroled on weapons possession charges.

Cops responding to the gunfire outside Jacqueline Nixon’s home knocked on her door and asked to search the place because a confidential informant had said the gunman ran into the building.

Nixon asked whether they had a search warrant, which they did not. She then declined to let them inside.

"I said there’s no reason for you to come into the apartment, and I told them to leave,” she testified.

As more cops arrived, Birchwood wedged his foot into the door so it would not close, and tried to talk his way in. Lance also got involved in the discussion, which went on for 20 minutes.

Nixon said the cops threatened to call child welfare authorities if they weren’t allowed to search her apartment for the gunman.

“As we were trying to close the door, they pushed the door and they all came in,” Nixon said.

“There were more than five cops in there. They pulled out flashlights and were looking around.”

Over the next half-hour, the officers looked around the living room and kitchen. They left, and Nixon filed a civilian complaint.

Defense lawyers Louis LaPietra and Marissa Gillespie said the cops had reason to enter the home — the aftermath of the shooting, the odor of marijuana, alcohol use, and the children who were there.

The lawyers argue that the officers didn’t force their way inside, and that those in the apartment argued with the cops. LaPietra and Gillespie said the police exercised restraint in a situation where they were being cursed and shouted at.

One man allegedly shouted, “Yo, chill the f--- out. There’s kids in here.”

“They were presented with absolute hostility,” LaPietra said.