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.
I can't read her mind. I would say either she genuinely thought he was faking, or she simply didn't care that he could be dying. We will never know what she thought, but we can see what she did, and that was, IMHO, borderline negligent.
YMMV
Point conceded.
Let me guess? He's a heavy sleeper and she was too weak to make enough noise to wake him?
Oooooooo! What do I win???
Nice broad.
A trained eye would recognize that he is wearing the traditional headgear and buttoned-to-the-top shirt of the Twelve Tribes Of Israel Rastafarian sect (as opposed to the Bobo Ashanti [who would wear a white turban] and the Nyabinghi [who would wear a robe]).
The TTOI Rastas are deeply involved in the central Brooklyn drug trade.
The hat with the normal-sized brim and the immense crown in a semi-military style is popular among militant Rastas who sympathized with the Jamaican military intervention in Angola in the 1970s.
Oh no. See, you have to have PROOF before you can argue your point (wideawake, on the other hand, does not). So none of us are allowed to comment on this until all of the documents, witness statements, etc... are released in open court.
OF COURSE we are arguing based on what we perceive the facts to be at this point. Our opinions may or may not change after all the facts are out. Wideawake's discounting our points because we don't have proof on paper is nothing but a diversionary tactic.
I am rarely even pulled over, but maybe once every three years I’ll get pulled over for speeding. I have found that if I smile and joke with the officers, they are almost always nice. I haven’t actually gotten a ticket since I was about 17. Usually they just give me a warning. I have never been arrested either.
You apparently don’t live in the right place.Most cops care very much about their communities,or else they wouldn’t put on their uniforms and become sitting ducks for every lunatic out there who hates authority.It’s not wrong to question and discipline rogue cops, but to paint all cops with a broad brush as being jackbooted thugs, brownshirts, or whatever is a disservice to the officers who do their jobs and do them well.
My attorney certainly would not take the alleged causality of the heart attack for granted.
Point conceded. The score is now 2-0 your favor.
I should have said you would be charged for the death.
Is that reason somehow not good enough for you? She failed to wake up several other people in the same hallway.
I'm the same way. I fell asleep the other night with our baby right next to me in her basket. In the middle of the night she was screaming her head off and my wife said I never budged. If you want to wake me up in the middle of the night you'd better make your knock sound like my cell phone.
All opinions expressed on this thread are completely invalid.
Are we not allowed to let our experiences color our opinions? Do yours not?
A former employer of mine had what he thought was severe indigestion and was doubled up in pain. His wife rushed him to the hospital and the doctors determined that he had suffered a "heart attack" - actually a myocardial infarction.
But not that day. His MRI showed that he had likely had a series of small MIs and that the pain he was experiencing was due to the accumulated damage these small attacks had done over time.
It wasn't the Indian food - although what he thought was the Indian food had indeed inspired his wife to take him to a doctor and be diagnosed.
If it was absolutely definitive that Jacobs had suffered a "heart attack" that day and for the exact reason he alleges, his attorney wouldn't be on the news. His attorney would have quietly received a fat settlement from the NYPD months ago.
I've only been pulled over a handful of times in 20 years. I'm going on at least five or six years ticket-free. Yes, smiling sometimes works. It didn't with this one donut eater, though. He said my efforts to keep my hands visible (i.e., on steering wheel) made me look suspicious. You just can't win with some of these jerks.
Oh, I'm sure of it - just as I am sure that anyone who suffers a medical complaint while in police custody will have some attorney's willing ear.
errr...where did you read that she was the cop that assaulted the man? You're the one walking around half-cocked saying she belongs in jail.
I got a speeding ticket in October. Of 1973. That was my last moving violation.
For some reason cops seem to like me. A few years back I had a visit from the narc squad, they were quite pleasant and professional, did their search, found little. I had a used 5 gal Freon drum for waste engine oil and someone had reported I was running a meth lab.
No muss, no fuss, thank you and have a nice day.
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