A New Jersey man alleges police brutally beat him for honking his horn during a 2013 traffic stop, and the city of Bridgeton, New Jersey agreed to a $500,000 settlement to make the resulting lawsuit go away.
Phillip A. DuBose and his wife, Cheryl, sued the city, the Bridgeton Police Department and six police officers after a Feb. 20, 2013 traffic stop that left DuBose with a concussion, two orbital fractures, eye injuries, and numerous abrasions, according to court documents cited by the Press of Atlantic City.
The lawsuit claims DuBose attempted to back his vehicle into a parking spot and was blocked by a police cruiser. When he went to a different spot, police issued him tickets for double parking and excessive use of his horn. Out of frustration, DuBose “momentarily lost his temper” and struck his steering wheel, and the horn went off again.
That’s when things got ugly.
According to The Daily Journal:
Bridgeton officers allegedly punched and kicked DuBose, at one point “pulling his arms behind his shoulders,” “spraying him with mace,” and “forcing him face down onto the pavement.”
One officer is said to have turned off his body microphone “so that the assault would not be recorded.”
Another allegedly officer told a “bloodied” DuBose, “Look at your face now, wise guy.”
Officers are purported to have taken pictures of an injured DuBose “for their own amusement.”
One of those images — of DuBose’s bleeding and bruised face — was supposedly later shown to his wife by an officer who said to her, “Wanna see your husband, Missy?”
DuBose was charged with disorderly conduct, aggravated assault of a police officer, resisting arrest and obstructing law enforcement, and kept shackled to his hospital bed. The charges were later dropped, “providing governmental acknowledgement that no probable cause to support those charges ever existed,” according to court records.
The alleged beating was only the latest in a string of police brutality complaints leveled against Bridgeton police in recent years.
“In 2006 Rigoverto Diaz, a Mexican immigrant worker, was arrested by Bridgeton police officers Carl Holliday and Gregory Willis and driven to a parking lot where he was beaten and robbed officers,” the Press of Atlantic City reports, noting that the incident was referenced in DuBose’s lawsuit.
That incident and others show the Bridgeton police officers “pursed a policy and custom of ‘roughing up’ immigrant workers, and of maliciously abusing criminal suspects in custody,” according to DuBose’s complaint.
News reports point out that both Holliday and Willis were guilty of official misconduct and left the department in 2006, and Holliday was later arrested in connection to bank robberies in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The city eventually settled a lawsuit brought by Diaz, The Daily Journal reports.
“The department has been the focus of other civil litigation over the years, including a $530,000 settlement in 2010 to three city residents who sued over allegations of racial profiling, as well as a suit filed last year by the widow of Jermane Reid, whom police shot and killed during a traffic stop,” according to the news site.
The officers named in DuBois’ lawsuit are Richard Zanni, Angel Santiago, Joseph Camp, Nicholas Caprio, Joshua Soper and Miguel Martinez, though their roles in the beating are not clear.
Santiago is also currently facing a different lawsuit filed by five female city employees claiming sexual harassment over several years.
Bridgeton Police Chief Michael A. Gaimari Sr. told the media the incident with DuBois was investigated by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, and “as a result, no internal or criminal charges were levied against any officer.”
DuBois’ $500,000 settlement comes with a confidentiality agreement that specifically states the officers involved and Bridgeton Police Department do not admit guilt in the ordeal.
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