Officer
Charged With Lying About Man’s Arrest
The homeowner was
accused of trying to run over a police officer in the driveway outside his
house. He was charged with felony reckless endangerment and spent three nights
in jail.
The homeowner said that the police officer made the whole
thing up and that he had video to prove it.
On Thursday, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office
announced that a grand jury had sided with the homeowner, indicting the police
officer, Diego A. Palacios, on five kinds of illegal lying, one of them a
felony.
The case goes back to February, when the homeowner, John
Hockenjos, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority engineer who lives in
Sheepshead Bay, had an interaction with Officer Palacios and another officer in
the driveway, which has been the subject of a bitter property feud between Mr.
Hockenjos and a neighbor.
According to a criminal complaint sworn by Officer Palacios,
Mr. Hockenjos drove his sedan “at high rate of speed” toward the officer,
creating a “grave risk of death” and causing the officer “to jump out of the
way to avoid being hit by defendant’s vehicle.”
But Mr. Hockenjos proffered a security video that showed something
altogether different: Mr. Hockenjos pulling slowly into the driveway, where the
officers and his neighbor are standing, and stopping. Neither officers nor
neighbor budge. The video also shows Mr. Hockenjos being led off in handcuffs
several minutes later.
“I’ve never seen this crystal-clear example of a false
arrest,” Mr. Hockenjos’s lawyer, Craig Newman, told reporters at the time.
On Thursday, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said
Officer Palacios, 30, an eight-year veteran of the force, had been indicted May
15 on charges of offering a false instrument for filing, falsifying business
records, making an apparently sworn false statement, perjury and making a
punishable false written statement. He also was charged with official
misconduct. He has been suspended.
The false business record offense, of which Officer Palacios
is charged with two counts, is a felony.
All charges against Mr. Hockenjos have been dropped,
prosecutors said.