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Lying Cop Who Ran Over & Arrested Elderly Man Costs City $2.9 Million
By
Miranda Katz
Published Jan 26, 2016
Modified Jan 26, 2016
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By
Miranda Katz
Published Jan 26, 2016
Modified Jan 26, 2016
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Taxpayers are shelling out nearly $3 million after a scooter-riding police officer slammed into a pedestrian and sent him flying—and then threw him in jail with a broken neck. According to José Flores's lawyer, Steven Goldstein, the case was scheduled to go to trial yesterday, but lawyers reached the $2.9 million settlement on January 21st.
"I wasn't surprised they eventually settled it," Goldstein said when reached by phone today. "It's a terrible case. It was the worst-slash-best case I've ever had. The city just did everything they possibly could to make this a great case. Everything they could have possibly done to make the case better and better, they did."
The crash occurred on August 7th, 2012, when Flores was crossing the street near the intersection of Liberty Avenue and Barbey Street in Cypress Hills. As surveillance video shows, the great-grandfather looked both ways before continuing across the street, but then-police officer Thomas Hopper ran him over while speeding by on a motor scooter, sending Flores spinning in the air.
According to Goldstein, Hopper then proceeded to charge him with endangering the life of a police officer, which is a misdemeanor. He told Sergeant Colleen Price that Flores had crossed between two parked cars and appeared from out of nowhere, and that he had no way to avoid the collision. But the video shows Flores crossing the street in plain view.
Flores was transported to the nearby Brookdale Hospital, where his lawyer says he was handcuffed to the bed in the emergency room and discharged shortly after being admitted, despite complaining of pain in his neck. The lawsuit alleges that Price and Hopper encouraged the hospital to discharge him without even performing an X-ray.
Upon his discharge, Flores was arrested on an open warrant for an open container summons from 2009 and thrown in jail. He remained there for 36 hours while complaining of severe pain in his neck. According to Goldstein, Flores said that while he was in jail, the other inmates gave him their sandwiches so that he could make a pillow for his neck.
After over 36 hours, a judge dismissed the warrant and suggested that Flores seek medical attention. He immediately went to Jamaica Hospital in Queens, where he was diagnosed with two fractured vertebrae in his neck. He remained in the hospital for four months in a halo brace; another four months after that, he had major surgery performed on his neck.
Among many things, the lawsuit accuses Hopper and Price of falsifying facts on the police report to absolve Hopper of any liability in the collision; putting pressure on Brookdale Hospital to release him prematurely; and charging Flores with a jaywalking violation, despite the fact that he was not jaywalking. Goldstein eventually took the jaywalking case to trial, and Flores was acquitted.
Flores is now 72, and his injuries persist to this day, his lawyer said. And Flores's wife, who had been diagnosed with dementia a month before he was struck in 2012, was so worried that her husband would be put in jail for endangering a police officer that she suffered a heart attack three months later and died.
Goldstein added that Hopper was suspended from the police force in 2009 for pulling a gun on another officer.
A spokesperson for the city's law department declined to comment beyond saying that the “[s]ettlement was in the city’s best interest.”
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