Another victim of NYC police brutality

The police in U.S. society serve as an armed, occupying force—particularly in Black and Latin@ communities—similar to the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it’s no coincidence that police brutality, including racial profiling and fatalities, is an everyday occurrence, especially in large urban areas from Philadelphia to Chicago to Los Angeles.

In terms of recent high-profile cases of this kind of repression, it would be very difficult not to put the sordid role of the New York Police Department, the largest police department in the country, very close to the top of the list. The most recent reported incident took place on Oct. 15.

Michael Mineo, a 24-year-old body piercer, has accused five New York police officers of raping him with an object resembling a police radio antenna in a Brooklyn subway station. An emotional Mineo recounted the events of that day to the media from a hospital bed in the Caledonian Campus of the Brooklyn Hospital Center on Oct. 25. “I was assaulted,” said Mineo. (Newsday.com, Oct. 26)

Mineo had spent four days in the hospital following the Oct. 15 incident, was diagnosed with “anal assault” and then released. A week later he was readmitted due to pain and blood in his urine, according to Mineo’s lawyer, Stephen Jackson. A police spokesperson confirmed that Mineo suffered a tear above his rectum, a bruise to his head and abdominal injury, but then added that the police were not to blame.

The police claim that Mineo was caught smoking marijuana in the station and attempted to run away when they approached him. Mineo said he was attacked for no reason. The five officers involved in the incident are still on duty. Trying to somehow justify what happened, the police stated that Mineo had been arrested on five previous charges.

“Here we go again,” remarked Jackson. “Abner Louima, [Sean] Bell and now add to that list Michael Mineo.” (Newsday.com, Oct. 26) Louima is a Haitian immigrant man who was raped in 1997 with the broken end of a toilet plunger in a Brooklyn police precinct bathroom following a number of police beatings. The Haitian community and their supporters organized protests against this racist atrocity. Some of the cops involved were convicted.

Bell is an African American who was fatally shot by four NYPD members on the morning of his wedding in 2006 outside a Queens nightclub. The cops who killed him and wounded two of his friends were acquitted in May.

Rev. Al Sharpton, leader of the National Action Network and an organizer of the Justice for Sean Bell protests, visited Mineo in the hospital. Calling for a “fair, independent investigation,” Sharpton stated: “I do not know what happened. But I do know that we cannot allow police to be the only investigative body, and find that their findings should go unquestioned and unexamined.” (New York Times, Oct. 26)