Bx. cop is put in a headlock
Crowd cheers, taunts officers
A Bronx man put an NYPD officer in a headlock while a crowd cheered him on, video of the wild incident shows.
A pair of officers were trying to arrest a man at Grand Concourse and Morris Ave. on July 1 when a crowd gathered around them and started shouting.
One man in the group filmed the encounter on his cell phone while cursing and taunting the officers, telling one, “This n——r right here, he act gangster cause he got a badge and a gun.”
Seconds later, the officer rushes at a man in the crowd — identified by police sources as Wisnel Manzueta, 29 — but Manzueta gets the better of the cop and puts him in a headlock, dragging the officer to the ground.
“They smoked you, p—-y! You just got smoked, p—-y!” the man taking the video yells, as the headlock suspect runs off.
The cop needed two staples to close cuts to his head, a police source said.
Manzueta surrendered alongside his lawyer at the 46th Precinct stationhouse a week later, authorities say.
Though he was initially charged by police, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark’s office deferred prosecution, meaning Manzueta remains free as prosecutors continue to investigate the case and weigh whether charges are merited.
“The NYPD was disappointed that the individual was not charged initially,” said Sgt. Jessica McRorie, an NYPD spokeswoman. “The violence against the police officer speaks for itself. We are now in discussions with the district attorney regarding the case.”
That was a sore spot for police sources, who pointed out that Manzueta remains free while the state’s cops can now be arrested for placing a suspect in a chokehold under a new New York law.
“Our city needs to wake up to the fact that our leaders have surrendered the streets to chaos,” said Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union. “This was a near-riot situation where a cop is fighting for his life, and somehow his attacker was allowed to go free.”
Lynch said he expects Clark to bring “real charges” against the man. “If that doesn’t happen, we should just run up the white flag and admit that the criminals are in charge,” he added.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association which first tweeted out the video on Saturday, and its president, Ed Mullins, were even more blunt on social media.
“COREY JOHNSON your STUPID law is about to be signed by NYC STUPID Mayor it’s time you both take your community input & grab these perps yourself,” the association posted on Twitter, tweeting at City Council Speaker Johnson and Mayor de Blasio.
The Council last month passed a bill that criminalizes chokeholds and other methods of restraint by police officers and sets up a string of police reform measures. Though it passed with a veto-proof majority, de Blasio said he’d sign it.
De Blasio responded to the video in a Twitter post Sunday night: “We have a lot to do to heal the relationship between police and the community. That starts with standing together and advancing reforms, but it also means we cannot accept violence against our police officers.”
The man initially arrested in the video, Franklin Adrian, 31, was charged with resisting arrest and obstructing government administration. He received a desk appearance ticket and was released.
Police said he was parked illegally in front of a hydrant, and the officers were trying to give him a parking ticket. He repeatedly refused to move his car, leading the officers to arrest him, an NYPD spokesman said.
His father, Francisco Adrian, said the officers roughed him up during the arrest.
“They broke his face and everything, hitting him for a ticket that they’d already given him. They threw him onto the floor,” the elder Adrian said.
“When I got there, they were already taking him to the police precinct, without a motive. They didn’t have to do that. … They’d already given him the ticket.”
Adrian is a father of five, his dad said. “I want people to take notice of this. He couldn’t breathe, just like the black guy they killed the other day,” the elder Adrian said, referring to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.