Posted on 10/08/2007 9:23:47 AM PDT by SubGeniusX
A mild-mannered Brooklyn high school teacher says he was nearly scared to death by NYPD cops who mistook him for a perp.
When the violent encounter was over, Lester Jacob, 50, suffered a heart attack and was left on his own in the street by cops, who accused him of "acting."
In July he underwent open-heart surgery.
Jacob had the misfortune to be driving home through Brownsville, Brooklyn, on June 22 around the same time cops were on the lookout for a hit-and-run driver. Jacob, an earth science teacher at James Madison High School in Midwood, heard a siren, looked in his rear-view mirror and dutifully pulled over for the radio car behind him.
He wasn't prepared for what happened next. Two officers rushed up to Jacob's vehicle and pointed their guns at his head, according to a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Cursing at him, they ordered Jacobs out of the car and roughly cuffed him.
"One officer crushed his knee into Mr. Jacob's back," the complaint states. "They then repeatedly slammed his head onto the car and then pressed his head against the car for some time."
Additional officers arrived on the scene with a witness to the earlier accident. The witness told them Jacob was the wrong guy.
"'I told you it was a white Maxima,'" the witness reportedly said, according to the complaint. Jacob drives a white Infiniti.
Jacob told the cops he was experiencing chest pains and began coughing uncontrollably.
A female cop said, "Nice acting," according to Jacob, and then drove off. Jacob said he struggled to drive home, stopping to vomit on the side of the road.
His wife rushed him to the hospital, where doctors determined he had suffered a heart attack.
"I was scared to death," Jacob said of his brush with the NYPD. "I was feeling terror."
His attorney John Lambros said there was no reason for the cops to handcuff or use excessive force against the 150-pound teacher while they were waiting for the witness to show up.
The cops were not identified, but their radio car number has been turned over to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. A spokeswoman for the city Law Department said the complaint is being reviewed.
Why didn’t your dad help the poor woman?
How bizarre? You think we are advocating assault charges be brought against the lady cop for her insensitive remark? Have you already forgotten the cuffing, head banging, the knee to the back? That was the assault.
Honestly, if you are reduced to such pathetic arguments, why bother?
That's a good question, BearCub. Why did your dad sit back and let that woman die?
Perhaps he should have been charged with depraved indifference, eh?
Yeah, what I said does seem a little harsh.
But it has nothing to do with what happened here, which is yet another example of police using excessive force and losing sight of the fact that we is the boss and they is the employee.
I suspect that in your opinion, there is nothing a LEO could do that would amount to a firing offense. Genocide would just be all in a days work.
He would have in heartbeat (he's a doctor), but he sleeps like a log. He didn't hear her knock.
She didn't die and he didn't ignore her. He was asleep. Perhaps the cops should have attended to her instead of assaulting innocent people.
The headbanging and the knee to the back are what the plaintiff claims.
I'm sure there is another side to the story - a side which may be potentially less lucrative for the plaintiff.
The cuffing is part of a stop-and-hold which may or may not be for probable cause.
“So whose door did they come crashing through? Dad’s. They threw him off the bed and handcuffed him.”
They probably thought he would be the safest one for them to arrest. Safe meaning he wouldn’t fight back.
Um, a cuffing is an arrest (he's not free to leave). Probable cause is the lowest standard under which an arrest may be made.
I understand that your stock in trade is hyperbole - but do you really think that people reading this thread can't tell the difference between telling someone to "stop acting" and eliminating a race of people?
Clearly you aren't interested in a serious discussion - you're engaging in the rhetorical equivalent of foaming at the mouth.
Oh, my.
I think it is a “libertarian thing” wherein authority is construed as an unnecessary evil. I believe it has something to do with premature weaning. LMAO.
It always freaks me out in these kind of threads that there are as many people on a conservative forum willing to jump on any chance to malign the police. You get a one-sided story from a guy that has filed a lawsuit and a part of the fringe element around here goes wackadoodle over it.
Jackbooted thugs.
You mean the victim? Since the assault caused a heart attack, it’s not hard to believe the victim in this case.
Either way you want to describe it, probable cause is the standard.
It's sort of unrelated, but jump over to the Cato Institutes's No-Knock Raid Map. Scads of examples of why we should be suspicious of police.
Dude. YOU said the arrest didn't have to be for probable cause (#208). I said it did.
A car not matching the description of the one you're looking for doesn't seem like proable cause to me. Does it to you?
Just because the plaintiff, his attorney and you all want to celebrate his supposed victimhood, doesn;t mean that it is established.
Since the assault caused a heart attack, it’s not hard to believe the victim in this case.
Whether or not he had a "heart attack" isn't established, either. For all we know he had a panic attack and when he went to the hospital they discovered an undiagnosed cardiac condition and scheduled him for surgery weeks later.
You make a ton of assumptions here with nothing in the way of established fact to back it up.
Oops. proable = probable
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