The beleaguered Yonkers Police Department, in the midst of a
three year federal justice department investigation into policing, is facing
another black eye with a new federal lawsuit alleging not only civil rights
violations, but that a duo of detectives relentlessly pursued a man, hell-bent
on exacting retribution in the most embarrassing of ways.
"This was stop and frisk plus," is the way
attorney Debra Cohen of Newman Ferrara described what happened during a night
of abuse to 23-year-old Danny Squicciarini.
He says two undercover Yonkers detectives were looking for
payback after Squicciarini tried to file a civilian complaint months prior. He
had been stopped in a grocery store parking lot, in an unmarked S.U.V. by two
men who never identified themselves as officers. Squicciarini was told to get
out of his car, was then frisked. "Then they illegally searched my car,
and helped themselves to a fishing knife from my glove box," Squicciarini
recalls.
Squicciarini is studying to become a police officer, and
knew the search of his car and seizure of his knife was illegal. But when he
tried filing a complaint that night with a desk sergeant at the second
precinct, he was denied. "They wouldn't let me file the complaint, even
though I had a license plate, car model and description of the men," he
recounted.
He decided to just let it go. Until he was stopped again,
five months later, in another store parking lot and things got really ugly.
Cohen says it should be a cautionary tale. "To everyone
out there who thinks that police abuse can't happen to them and their family,
this is what happens when we don't address police misconduct."
Yonkers Detectives DeVito and DellaDonna, who've now been
named in a federal civil rights lawsuit, again ordered Danny out of his car,
Danny said. Again, he says, they did not identify himself, before patting him
and a friend down and again searching his car. This time, though, they came up
with one unlit marijuana cigarette. Usually a $100 fine and a desk appearance
ticket, they chose instead to arrest him and take him to jail.
Of the marijuana charge, Cohen says, "The judge agreed
the charges were absurd, the matter was adjourned in contemplation of
dismissal, and the matter will be ultimately dismissed and file closed."
It was not even a misdemeanor charge, but still the two
detectives had him held for two hours, Squicciarini says, and he was prevented
from using a bathroom, was told to remove all his clothes in a public area of
the jail in front of multiple officers. With surveillance cameras rolling
according to Squicciarini, they performed "strip and body cavity
searches", made disparaging comments about his ethnic origins, his
genitals, and lewd sexual comments.
Nothing was discovered in the detectives' exhaustive investigation.
No charges were ever filed.
"They made it clear to me that they were retaliating
against me for filing a complaint on them," says Squicciarini.
One of the many findings in the on-going Federal
investigation of the Yonkers' Police Department is that is inadequate in how it
handles civilian complaints.