It was just another day in the Bronx when half a dozen NYPD officers ganged up on Santiago Hernandez, 23, before taking turns to violently trash the unarmed target.
RawStory Reports:
According to Hernandez, he was standing in front of a home in the Melrose section of the Bronx on August 18th when a uniformed NYPD officer stopped and asked to frisk him.
“I turned around and put my hands up,” Hernandez explained, saying the officers told him they were investigating a noise complaint.
When the search turned up nothing, Hernandez asked why he had been searched. At that point the female officer grabbed his armed and slapped a handcuff on him.
“I’m like, ‘Miss what you doing? You are hurting my arm,’ ” Hernandez said. “She just was telling me to put my hands behind my back, but ‘I’m like trying to understand what are you are arresting me for. Can you please tell me?’.”
Moments after refusing to comply to an order to put both his hands behind his back, a half-dozen uniformed officers appeared and dog-piled on Hernandez, punching and kicking and dragging him onto the sidewalk.
While building surveillance captured the incident without sound, a cellphone video fully backups Hernandez’s account. “They was taking turns on me. One kicks me, he steps back. Another one comes to punch me and he steps back,” he said. “And another one comes and grabs my arm and hits me like 10 times with the baton. Another one comes and pepper sprayed me, they were taking turns like a gang.”
Hernandez told Eyewitness News that he was only concerned about being arrested, since he is on parole after serving six years in prison for a conviction related to gang activity when he was 14.
Hernandez’s attorney, Jay Heinrich, said he’ll be filing a civil suit against the city. Meanwhile, NYPD claims they are investigating the matter, but we all know by now that only 9.7 percent of the time do they properly follow up on police misconduct.
Watch the video from ABC7, below.
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Photo: ABC
