PTH Member Assaulted and Charged with Disorderly Conduct By the NYPD.

Police Brutality Must Stop!!

Picture The Homeless member Abdul Sabur's account of the incident that took place this past August.

     At about 3:30 pm on August 3, 2009, a friend and I were returning to our office in the Bronx after conducting outreach in Manhattan. We exited the D train at 183^rd St. and Grand Concourse and began to walk down 183rd St. As we got to the corner of 183^rd St. and Walton Ave., a patrol car pulled in front of us. Two officers, one of whom was a sergeant, got out and started to question us.

      A minute later, they had us up against the wall and began to frisk us. The frisk went without incident until an undercover officer, who has a reputation for harassment and assault, arrived on the scene and took control of the situation. However, his attitude was not the most courteous. This officer and I had a run-in before in which he falsified a report that landed me in the system for a couple of hours. This officer started yelling and cursing and caused the situation to get out of control by slamming my head into the wall and repeatedly demanding that I “shut the fuck up” when I had only asked him what was the problem. This officer then asked his partner for a pair of handcuffs to arrest me. It seemed that I was a target to him because at this point my associate was not in custody.

      When I asked why I was being arrested, the officer said he observed us involved in a transaction, however during the frisk of myself and my associate, nothing was found. So the officers said I was being arrested for disorderly conduct. When I asked him what I did to get such a charge, the officer again responded “shut the fuck up,” and when I explained that I did nothing, the officer snapped and started to tighten up the cuffs, causing extreme pain. As I screamed in pain, passersby started to observe what was happening and the officer started pushing my cuffed arms upward while squeezing the handcuffs until the steel began to penetrate my wrists and cut off my circulation. He then dragged me to the patrol car and he and his partner picked me up by my feet and tossed me inside. I waited in the squad car for about two minutes for a transport vehicle.

      Once the transport van arrived, they dragged me out of the car and applied even more pressure to the handcuffs. As we rode to the precinct, I was threatened with physical violence. My associate was also arrested only after saying “that’s fucked up the way you’re treating him, and that’s not necessary.” The officers responded with “you don’t like it- you can join him,” and they cuffed him as well, although they did not manhandle him the way they did me.

      After we got to the stationhouse, I again asked why I was arrested. The officers claimed that my friend and I were engaged in an argument that was so intense that pedestrians had to walk around us. These allegations were recorded on paper to support the disorderly conduct charge, but the truth is that there was never any argument, nor were there any unlawful transactions made. The police had absolutely no probable cause to stop us, much less frisk us and take us into custody. I spent five days in the system, all of which was spent in bullpens, without a bed. Now, three weeks later, my wrists still bear the scars from the tightened handcuffs, and there is some numbness in my left hand.

      What is even more upsetting is that the sergeant who was present from the beginning of this whole incident stood by and allowed all of this madness to occur without ever stepping up to contain or regain control of the situation. This type of police misconduct has to stop! Too many people have been stopped unlawfully, been badly hurt, or even killed. It is time to end police brutality. Remember- this could happen to anyone- even you.

Abdul Sabur

Picture The Homeless

Civil Rights Committee