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March 10, 2013

Woman was shackled to a hospital bed for 17 days after cops broke her leg during a wrongful arrest



A Brooklyn landlord says she was shackled to a hospital bed for 17 days after cops broke her leg during a wrongful arrest in the hallway of her Flatbush building.
Karen Brim, 42, claims an NYPD officer threw her to the ground, severely fracturing her left leg, after she identified herself as the owner of the Utica Avenue building and asked why the cops were there, according to a new lawsuit.
The single mother was arrested and brought to Kings County Hospital, where she needed multiple surgeries, plates and screws to fix the bones broken in a tussle with Officer Timothy Reilly.
Adding insult to injury, court papers say, was the way police restrained her for more than two weeks during her hospital stay, with one officer posted outside her room.
“She was hand- and ankle-cuffed to her hospital bed,” lawyer Marshall Bluth told The Post. “They would not allow family or friends to enter. She wasn’t presented before a judicial hearing officer for 17 days. It was pretty egregious.”
A state court spokesman said the 24-hour standard for arraignment in criminal cases doesn’t apply when defendants are hospitalized.
But Brim was conscious and incapable of fleeing because of her injuries and could have been arraigned at any point, Bluth said.
“She’s not a flight risk. She cannot run out of the hospital. There’s no need to handcuff and ankle-cuff her. Being handcuffed to a bed — it’s like being a caged animal. It’s outrageous,” he said. “It’s beyond belief. Not for one day, not for one week, but for 17 days?”
The confrontation with cops unfolded on April 30, 2012, when Reilly, Officer Ralph Giordano and an unidentified partner spotted four neighborhood teens hanging out on a roof adjacent to Brim’s building. They chased the youths into Brim’s building, entering via the roof, as Brim was mopping a hallway, according to a police source and Brim’s Brooklyn federal court lawsuit.
Brim claims things got physical when she protested that the kids were visitors and not trespassing.
Cops maintain that Brim was the violent one — swinging a broom at Reilly, smacking him in the head and putting her hand around his neck, according to a criminal complaint.
The cops arrested the teens — Brenado Simpson, Clifton Bailey, Robean Romans and Distephano Destin — for trespassing. The charges were later dropped, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said.
Brim was charged with assault, resisting arrest, menacing, harassment and obstructing governmental administration. Her criminal case is pending.
Brim insists in court papers the cops lied.
“She’s mopping the common areas, as she does once every two weeks or so, and suddenly police officers descend from the roof into her building and proceed to beat her up, basically,” Bluth said. “No one really knows for sure why they did this. They basically stormed her building.”
The cops did not have a warrant, according to Brim, who’s owned the three-story building for more than a decade and operates a beauty salon on the first floor.
Brim is seeking unspecified damages in her lawsuit, which accuses the officers of using “unnecessary and unreasonable” force, false arrest, falsifying evidence and violating her constitutional rights.
It was the second time in a year Reilly was accused of being violent with the public. Brooklyn resident Samuel Semple sued the city last year after Reilly allegedly “forcibly dragged” him out of a restaurant. Semple, who suffered minor injuries, got a $10,000 settlement in January.
The city will review Brim’s allegations once it gets a copy of the lawsuit, a Law Department spokeswoman said.

6 comments:

  1. Your Tax Dollars at Work!

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  2. There are so many examples of police brutality, lying under oath, planting evidence and covering up for each other that it really becomes a stretch to automatically believe any police officer.

    The word of police officers has the same credibility as the word of anyone in the US government or big bank executives.

    It makes a lot of sense to believe Karen Brim in this case.

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    1. Police routinely lie under oath and are all complicit in "holding the thin blue line;" (think Drew Peterson with a couple murders under his belt), they know they will not be outed by their fellow officers because they all stand together right or wrong. In this case, with O'Reilly already accused of violence in another case, I firmly believe Ms. Brim is innocent. There was no warrant, so the police were out of line. Their brutality is usually overlooked because the average person can be bullied. I hope Ms. Brim sues the socks off that police dept and that officer loses his badge and his pension. He can find a job sweeping floors somewhere. That's all he's good for. And because of his bullying and quite possibly a conviction, he will not be allowed to have a gun. That's gun control I can believe in.

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  3. She had every right, under Supreme Court ruling, to resist that officer's unlawful arrest, to the point of lethal measures if necessary.

    IMO..that officer is lucky he got someone to overpower this time....in his 'adrenaline rush' to beat a couple of kids for doing kid stuff.
    I understand that some things the kids do are offensive, annoying and/or thuggish...yes, sometimes criminal...but this sounds like they were just jumping rooftops or 'burning one' on the roof or something.
    Sounds to me like that cop just wanted to beat something up in the pursuit. Seems that the only reason the kids weren't beat-up is because this cop wasn't right there when they got caught..he was too busy being a girly-man elsewhere.
    Well...I hope he feels really good about it. Because it seems that people are going to snap on police thugs soon, and he's most-likely NOT going to be that happy anymore*nod*

    Handcuffed to a hospital bed with screws and pins and everything else in major parts of the leg?
    REALLY?
    And not one person has made one citizen's arrest on these cops and hospital staff?

    I see it this way...if I were one of those kids being chased that day, I'd feel it was my duty to do something for this woman...because she more-than-likely saved my life from that POS cop.

    I'm not normally for any crazy lawsuits...but as I understand the story written, I hope she gets a good bit out of it.
    Hopefully the cop gets forced out and jailed to...but from what is in the story, it sounds like this fool has been protected in the past. We shall see.





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  4. Plus the cops outside the hospital room get overtime while protecting the public from the 110 pound one legged mop carrying alleged felon!! This is a win-win for everybody connected with the case!

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