By Jacob Kaye<\/p>\n
For the past year, Leon Jones has passed a group of police officers stationed near his home on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens nearly every time he\u2019s gone outside. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s never sure if they recognize him \u2013 but he recognizes them. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey act like they don\u2019t even know who I am because I’m not wounded no more, my face is not knotted up, I don’t have the bloody clothes on,\u201d Jones recently told the Eagle. \u201cBut if I had the same bloody clothes on, the same scars, they would know exactly who I was because that was their damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new lawsuit claims that officers from Southeast Queens\u2019 113th Precinct were in the process of arresting Jones\u2019 daughter a year ago this week when they slammed the 46-year-old Queens man to the ground, knocked him unconscious, and beat him so badly that a judge immediately demanded he be taken from the courthouse to a hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody has to be held accountable for this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Jones and his attorneys at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP claim in the recently filed federal lawsuit that the officers used excessive force when they wrongfully arrested Jones during a Fourth of July barbecue at his apartment complex last year. The cops later denied him medical treatment while detaining him without a reason, the lawsuit alleges. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit calls for the NYPD and the city to compensate Jones for his physical injuries and the emotional damage caused by the violent arrest. But Jones and his attorneys said they also just want the officers behind the alleged beating to answer for the incident. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe main goal of this lawsuit is to shine a light on the officers who violated Mr. Jones’ rights,\u201d said Laura Kokotailo, Jones\u2019 lawyer. \u201cThis case is about calling out that this is unacceptable\u2026and that the officers involved must be held responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Law Department did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
\u2018It was just nasty\u2019<\/p>\n
Jones said there was nothing unusual about the barbecue being held in the courtyard of the apartment complex he lives in on Rockaway Boulevard on Independence Day last year. <\/p>\n
The celebration extended into the evening and a little after midnight, Jones\u2019 19-year-old daughter got into a fight. <\/p>\n
A large number of cops gathered outside and began to arrest the teen \u2013 a neighbor overheard officers refer to the barbecue as a \u201criot situation,\u201d the lawsuit alleged. <\/p>\n
Jones made his way outside after getting word that his daughter was being arrested, and was shocked by the number of cops who had responded to the scene. <\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, Jones jogged toward the officers with his hands in the air and began asking questions about the arrest when he was tackled to the ground by a dozen officers. <\/p>\n
They pushed Jones\u2019 face into the pavement, handcuffed him, and began to hit him in the back of the head, Jones claims. <\/p>\n
The cops allegedly encouraged one another to hit Jones and use their tasers. Jones said that, at one point, he heard someone refer to him as a \u201cf\u2013cking animal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long after the beating began, Jones lost consciousness. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just nasty,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI was looking for my kid. I posed no threat. I didn’t have a weapon. I just was going to ask a question about my child. That’s it. That’s literally all I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones came to in the back of a police cruiser. The officers were taking him to the 113th Precinct and had not called for medics, according to the lawsuit. <\/p>\n
The officers eventually called for an ambulance after arriving at the precinct, and only at the insistence of Jones’ wife, the lawsuit alleges. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital but was quickly brought back to the 113th. <\/p>\n
For the next 22 hours, Jones was allegedly held in central booking. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the police who escalated this encounter,\u201d Kokotailo said. \u201cThere was no justification for the police to do what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Jones\u2019 detainment was lengthy, his time before a judge was not. <\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d the Queens Criminal Court judge allegedly said after seeing Jones\u2019 open head wound and bloody T-shirt. <\/p>\n
The judge immediately ordered Jones to be released from custody and granted him an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. <\/p>\n
Swept under the rug<\/p>\n
A year after the arrest, Jones said he largely hasn\u2019t been able to shake it. <\/p>\n
Many of the officers involved in the incident remain in the 113th Precinct, which he lives close to. At first, he said he felt angry whenever he spotted them. But recently, he\u2019s felt nervous, he said. <\/p>\n
Jones said he\u2019s mostly baffled that life has gone on as usual after the arrest that left him wounded. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe police just beat my ass, they beat my daughter up, and then they just say, \u2018All right, go home now,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cNobody gets held accountable for this. Nothing happens. Just sweep it under the rug.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jacob Kaye For the past year, Leon Jones has passed a group of police officers stationed near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-283738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}