Human rights group accuses NYPD of brutality
June 26, 1996
Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EDTFrom Correspondent Peg Tyre
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Amnesty International plans to release a scathing report this week that claims the New York Police Department is rife with abuses, ranging from ill-treatment to unjustified shootings aimed especially against black, Latino and Asian suspects.
"There is a routine level of brutality among a number of officers who seem to act with impunity throughout the city," Amnesty's Angela Wright said.
The report calls for an independent investigation into police violence. Department critics say that would be a first step toward restoring the trust between police and the citizens they are suppose to protect.
New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir dismissed the Amnesty report, saying "it has an agenda, it's anecdotal, it's long on hysteria and short on facts."
The department has been riding a wave of positive publicity recently with crime statistics at their lowest in two decades.
In the last month, police have cracked two high-profile cases: the arrests of a man who calls himself the Zodiac killer and of John Royster, who allegedly killed one woman and savagely beat three others, including a young pianist in Central Park.
Complaints of brutality on rise
However, critics say the police department's quality-of-life campaign, which encourages arrests for vagrancy, turnstile jumping and graffiti, has encouraged brutality.
Amnesty said the number of complaints of police brutality has more than doubled from 977 in 1987 to 2,000 in 1994.
The organization investigated 90 cases. Among them were Ernest Sayon, who died while being arrested in 1994, and the 1995 police shooting of 16-year-old Yon Sing Hwan. He was killed when police apparently mistook his pellet gun for a dangerous weapon.
Another case involved Carlton Brown, who said officers pushed his head through a plate glass door in 1992 after he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to the station house for a traffic violation.
"I kept saying, 'My neck is broke, my neck is broke,'" Brown recalled. "And I heard some of the police officers saying, 'Get up, get up' and I says, 'I can't move.'"
Brown's injuries left him a quadriplegic. The officers who arrested him were charged with assault but were acquitted. Brown said he is not sure race played a factor in his assault.
"I kept asking myself why they had treat me how they treated me," Brown said. "Sometimes I wonder if it was because I am a black person."
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