Sharpton, NYC Reach $200,000 Settlement

ajc.com ^ | December 8, 2003 | SARA KUGLER

[Bubba_Leroy]

NEW YORK (AP)--New York City has agreed to pay $200,000 in damages to Al Sharpton after he was stabbed nearly 13 years ago at a protest where he said police failed to protect him.

The settlement, which also covers the Democratic presidential candidate's $7,447.76 hospital bill, came as jury selection was to begin Monday in his decade-old civil case against the New York Police Department.

Sharpton claimed police were ``careless, negligent and reckless'' during the 1991 incident, said his lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein. Sharpton, a civil rights activist, was protesting what he considered lenient sentencing of white defendants in the 1989 killing of Yusuf Hawkins, a black teenager.

The city's law department on Monday defended the NYPD's actions, but said it agreed to the settlement because the city could not predict how a jury might rule.

Sharpton said he still fears large crowds as a result of the stabbing, and has a one-inch scar on his chest.

His attacker, Michael Riccardi, was convicted of first-degree assault and sentenced to the maximum of five to 15 years in prison.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

"The settlement, which also covers the Democratic presidential candidate's $7,447.76 hospital bill"

Maybe now he will pay that bill, although it's probably been written off.

[yonif]

Sharpton said he still fears large crowds as a result of the stabbing,

Didn't seem scared when he was on SNL....

[CounterCounterCulture]

Here's the Reuters version

Sharpton Gets $200,000 Settlement in NYC Stabbing

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Rev. Al Sharpton reached a settlement of $200,000 on Monday in his civil case against New York City that charged police failed to protect him when he was stabbed in a racially motivated attack 12 years ago.

Sharpton, the outspoken civil rights activist who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, also receives more than $7,000 to cover a five-day hospital stay during which he had surgery for a punctured lung after the stabbing.

The settlement came minutes before lawyers were to begin jury selection for the trial in which Sharpton, 49, was seeking unspecified monetary damages for physical and psychological injuries from the Jan. 12, 1991, attack.

On that day, Sharpton says, a white man, Michael Riccardi, breached a police-secured zone and stabbed him in the chest with a 5-inch knife as he was about to lead a protest march through the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst over the killing of black teen-ager Yusuf Hawkins by a gang of white men.

"I am pleased this case was resolved so Rev. Sharpton does not have to relive the nightmare of his stabbing on the witness stand and is now free to carry on his campaign," said his lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein.

Rubenstein said the attack occurred despite assurances that police would provide protection. He said Sharpton had received death threats before the attack, which prompted police to guard him round-the-clock for a 30-day period at one point.

The New York City Law Department defended the performance of police in the incident.

"The city strongly believes that the NYPD acted appropriately," said spokeswoman Kate Ahlers. "However, the city could not predict how a jury might rule and therefore believed that settlement was the best resolution for all parties involved."

Sharpton, head of the 25-chapter National Action Network, has been at the center of some of New York's most heated controversies. He became well known for his advocacy on behalf of Tawana Brawley, whose false 1987 claim that she was raped by a gang of white men stoked racial tensions in New York.

Riccardi was convicted of assault in the case and sentenced to five to 15 years in prison. (Additional reporting by Larry Fine)

[At _War_With_Liberals]

If his security failed to protect him, how could the cops?

[CholeraJoe]

I think he had a punctured lung, if reports are true, so I wouldn't call him a wimp

George Bush #41 flew a bombing mission while his plane was on FIRE and the press called him a wimp.

[CounterCounterCulture]

That's the liberal media for ya.

Make smear...repeat smear ad nauseam.

[Honestfreedom]

or Yankel Rosenbaum who was stabbed to death by a Sharpton inspired mob in Crown Heights.

[Clemenza]

Freeper Cacique was nearby when this happened.

Little background: Sharpton had a protest March through the blue collar white neighborhood where Yusef Hawkins was beater to death. Most of the counterprotesters told him to go him, although a few held watermelons and at least one had a confederate flag (the media had a field day).

[Fzob]

First thing I thought of as well.

[MainFrame65]

Pagones needs to be in court RIGHT NOW to attach that payment before the check is cashed - and before Sharpton donates it to his own "charitable" organization.

[South40]

Sharpton sure seemed right at home on SNL with everyone laughing at him.

[Howlin]

Fat chance.

[GrandMoM]

I think he had a punctured lung, if reports are true, so I wouldn't call him a wimp as much as I despise the man.

....Oh, OKAY....what an airbag!!!

[kcvl]

"The Real Al Sharpton (By The Real Lenora Fulani)"

March 10, 2003

We'd sit in my offices - often with my political mentor Fred Newman, who funded some of Sharpton's activities in the early days - plotting, scheming, and laughing about the backwardness of the handkerchief-heads, the white liberals, the phony Black revolutionaries. I brought white people out to Bensonhurst to march with us after the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in 1989 and we’d joke about how crazy the Black nationalists acted in response. Sharpton and I became a team. I was the socialist, he was the preacher. The Black community was curious, but supportive. We were so different from all the other leadership.

Sharpton was so incorrigibly committed to promoting himself that on the day he was stabbed in Bensonhurst in 1991, he was already figuring out how to use his near-death experience to open the pearly gates of political acceptability while he still lay in his hospital bed. I know this because Newman and I were there - we'd been with him in the schoolyard staging area when Michael Riccardi thrust a knife into his chest; Newman took him to the hospital in his car because the ambulance was slow to arrive. Once he was out of danger, Sharpton regaled us with hilarious accounts of the solemn parade of Black officialdom that passed by his bedside. The Black hierarchs – from Mayor David Dinkins to Jesse Jackson himself – were eager to preside over his redemption. And Sharpton, for all his righteous fury, wanted to be redeemed. In retrospect, I realize this was the day that Sharpton decided to trade in his nascent independence to become a Democrat.


http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:YmdzRHGi2BcJ:www.blackelectorate.com/articles.asp%3FID%3D822+Michael+Riccardi,+sharpton&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[OldFriend]

Paying Sharpton and denying the victims of the Staten Island Ferry crash.

How very Blooming-idiot.

[salmon76]

Good one, Al. This is a clever way to get around those pesky campaign finance laws.

[potlatch]

Lol, he WAS a little 'fluffy' in that picture!!

[ppaul]

Pagones v. Maddux, Mason and Sharpton Tawana Brawley Grand Jury Report In November of 1987, a 15-year-old girl named Tawana Brawley was found in upstate New York, covered with feces and racial slurs written in charcoal. Brawley, who is black, claimed to have been abducted and raped by six white law enforcement officers. A decade later, the men who advised Brawley after the alleged incident -- Al Sharpton, Alton Maddox, and lawyer C. Vernon Mason -- are being sued by one of those six men: Steven Pagones, then a local prosecutor, now an assistant state attorney general. In a trial that began December 3, 1997 in a Duchess County, New York courtroom, Pagones sought damages for defamation that escalated during the course of the trial from $150 million to $395 million, but returned to $150 million during the eventual damages phase. Brawley, now 25 and called Maryam Muhammad, appeared after 10-year silence at a Brooklyn rally the night before her advisors' trial began to insist once more that her charges are true. Her case was ultimately thrown out in 1988 when a grand jury determined that her story was not credible. Justice S. Barrett Hickman of the New York State Supreme Court has allowed that report to be included as evidence in the current trial. On July 13, 1998, after a trial lasting almost eight months, a jury found the three advisors liable for defaming Pagones. Just over two weeks later, on July 29, the jury awarded Pagones $345,000 in damages, about two percent of the amount he originally sought. Sharpton was found liable for $65,000 of the total damages, Maddox for $95,000 and Mason for $185,000. Here is the full text of the 1988 grand jury report that cleared Pagones and the other alleged attackers of any wrongdoing. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE DISAPPEARANCE AND THE DISCOVERY OF TAWANA BRAWLEY THE ALLEGATIONS OF WHAT WAS DONE TO TAWANA BRAWLEY. THE EVIDENCE AS TO TAWANA BRAWLEY'S WHEREABOUTS THE EVIDENCE AS TO TAWANA BRAWLEY'S MEDICAL CONDITION THE EVIDENCE AS TO A POSSIBLE SEXUAL ASSAULT THE PSYCHIATRIC EVIDENCE THE EVIDENCE AS TO TAWANA BRAWLEY'S PHYSICAL APPEARANCE THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST STEVEN PAGONES AND OTHERS CONCLUSIONS

[concerned about politics]

New York City has agreed to pay $200,000 in damages to Al Sharpton after he was stabbed nearly 13 years ago at a protest where he said police failed to protect him.

He started the chaos, and NY taxpayers foot the bill. Sounds like a democrat to me.

[concerned about politics]

Sharpton said he still fears large crowds as a result of the stabbing, and has a one-inch scar on his chest.

Oh pooooolease. Without an audiance, this guy is lost. He's a Hillary clone! The camera and attention gives him life! Without it, he'd shrivel up like a deflated balloon! Like Hillary, the camera and the celebrity freaks are all he's got!