Officers Who Killed Kimani Gray Have Been Sued Repeatedly For Civil Rights Violations
- Details
- Category: Atlanta
- Published on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 06:21
- Written by The Atlanta Daily World
- Hits: 110
As information continues to surface regarding the events surrounding 16-year-old Kimani Gray‘s shooting by NYPD officers on March 9, it appears that the initially unnamed officers, Jovaniel Cordova (pictured below left) and Sergeant Mourad Mourad (pictured below), cost the New York Police Department hundreds of thousands of dollars due to previous civil rights violations, according to the New Yorker.
In 2007, Mourad was reportedly sued at least three times for abuse of stop-and-frisk, while Cordova is said to have been sued twice in 2011 for similar mishandling of the public to the tune of $215,000 in total.
In fact, Attorney Brett Klein of Leventhal & Klein LLPtold WNYC that in four of the five cases brought against the two officers — Klein represented four of the clients — violent force culminating in false arrests has been a problematic pattern for both Cordova and Mourad:
“Our clients’ interactions with Sergeant Mourad [and] Officer Cordova expose a disturbing pattern of unconstitutional and aggressive stop-and-frisk practices. In our experience, their practices resulted in the false arrests of our clients often with violence.”
Not surprisingly, according to New York’s Comptroller’s office, civil rights claims against the NYPD are on the rise.
WNYC reports:
Civil rights claims against the NYPD, which include stop-and-frisk, false arrests and use of excessive force or assault, were up 14 percent in fiscal year 2011 from the year before. There were 4,561 police action claims filed in that fiscal year, the latest for which the office has reports.
