1. Home
2. Daily News
3. NYC Judge Plans to Sue City Over Alleged…

NYC Judge Plans to Sue City Over Alleged Police Brutality

By Mark Hansen

August 30, 2012, 7:30 pm CDT

A New York City judge who claims he was assaulted by a police officer has filed a notice of claim with the city, a precursor to a lawsuit.

Queens Judge Thomas Raffaele said he has no other option but to sue the city since District Attorney Richard Brown has declined to prosecute the officer who he alleges hit him and there has been no action from any other city agency, including the police internal affairs department and the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the New York Law Journal reports.

Raffaele says he was assaulted June 1 when he happened on the scene of an arrest in his neighborhood that had drawn a crowd. The judge said one of the officers suddenly charged the crowd, hitting him in the throat with a karate-like blow.

The district attorney announced last week that he would not prosecute the officer who Raffaele says struck him. He suggested that the judge had encroached on the police. Raffaele then accused Brown of orchestrating a cover-up .

“The fact that there have been lies told … to justify my being smashed in the throat, I think that has to be answered,” Raffaele told the New York Law Journal.

Filing the notice gives Raffaele a year to pursue a lawsuit. The judge said he doesn’t have a lawyer yet and doesn’t know what damages he will seek.

Brown, in a statement responding to Raffaele’s notice of claim, said his office took the judge’s allegations “very seriously” and investigated them thoroughly. But he said there wasn’t enough evidence that the officer had intended to inflict an injury or that Raffaele had been injured.