NYC Man Suing Police for Accidental Shooting
August 11th, 2011
A man who was shot last year during a block party in Harlem is now suing the City of New York for $7 million in damages and psychological trauma.
The citizen, Antoine Brown, was at a block party last year when two men started fighting each other. The fight led to the police being called in to break up, and they did so by firing 46 times into the crowd of 150 around the brawl. One of the bullets struck Mr. Brown, and when he went to a nearby community center to get out of the fray, the police followed him and continued their harassment.
According to Mr. Brown’s legal team, he has suffered severe psychological trauma since that event, and is now afraid to step outside his New York City home, which has apparently crushed his boyhood dream of being a teacher in the city. Also, the lawsuit claims Mr. Brown only feels psychologically secure when he is on the campus of his university upstate.
While some of the details of the lawsuit seem a little sketchy, the event itself is a prime example of police going above and beyond necessary force to break up a crowd. Even more so, this is the second instance of overzealous law enforcement in NYC that we’ve covered this summer (first one was the fruit juice arrest back in May). I don’t think it’s just NYC cops that are doing this, but it seems like that city has some of the most aggressive, and unrepentant, law enforcement bodies in the country. Maybe this court case will help change that.
