2
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MAY 17, 2020
COVID ARREST
him in handcuffs to the 75th
Precinct station house.
“I felt a kick on my head,
a kick on my back. The
handcuffs on my veins were
really tight, I kept begging
them to loosen them a little
bit,” said the father-of-two. “I
was on the fl oor, I thought I
was going to die.”
The incident was Atunbi’s
fi rst violent encounter
with law enforcement —
and, he said, the takedown
left him with an injured leg,
which he has yet to have a
doctor examine because he
fears getting infected with
COVID-19 at a medical facility.
“I can’t walk properly
right now due to the incident,”
he said. “I couldn’t go
to the hospital because of all
the coronavirus there.”
The attacking cop’s badge
matches that of Sergeant
Adnan Radoncic of the 75th
precinct, who is named in at
least six lawsuits between
2012 and 2018, four of which
have combined to cost the
city $433,000, according to
the nonprofi t Legal Aid Society’s
database, CAPstat.
The 75th precinct, which
is by far the most often sued
precinct in the Five Boroughs,
was named in 91 federal
lawsuits between 2015
and June 2018, which totaled
to cost taxpayers more than
$9 million in settlements, according
to the society.
And the eastern Brooklyn
precinct might face
yet another legal battle, as
Atunbi says that he is considering
fi ling charges stemming
from the incident.
The police report from
the hostile encounter states
that offi cers on patrol attempted
to break up a group
of between six and eight
men, who had gathered on
the corner at 6:50 pm, and
were “engaging in aggressive
and confrontational behavior.”
Offi cers tried to disperse
the group but some of them
allegedly resisted, including
one 31-year-old, who cops say
tried to fi ght offi cers, before
they used “necessary force”
to take him into custody —
and charged him with menacing
an offi cer, resisting
arrest, and obstructing governmental
administration.
Authorities also slapped
two other men, including
Atunbi and the man who
stood beside him in the
video, with disorderly conduct
and violating Mayor
Bill de Blasio’s social distancing
laws.
As with several other
high-profi le arrests this
past week, many of the cops
on the scene were wearing
no masks, gloves, or other
protective equipment — including
the precinct’s commanding
offi cer Deputy Inspector
John Mastronardi,
who donned plain clothes,
wearing a burgundy hoodie,
and shrugged off criticisms
from bystanders for his offi
cers’s behavior, according
to Atunbi.
“He just stood there and
let his offi cers abuse citizens,”
he alleged.
Brooklyn District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez has
launched a probe into at
least three similarly violent
social distancing arrests —
two in the 75th Precinct, and
another in the neighboring
73rd Precinct — that happened
on the weekend of May
2 after politicians and advocates
slammed the Department
for brutally enforcing
the law in black communities,
while gleefully handing
out free masks in more wellheeled
neighborhoods.
Even the offi cers union,
the Police Benevolent Association,
came out against
making police enforce social
distancing, while scolding
politicians for not giving
clear guidance.
“The NYPD needs to
get cops out of the social
distancing enforcement
business altogether,” said
PBA president Pat Lynch
in a statement. “The cowards
who run this city have
given us nothing but vague
guidelines and mixed messages,
leaving the cops on
the street corners to fend for
ourselves.”
In his May 7 press briefing,
de Blasio countered that
the vast majority of social
distancing enforcement has
been successful and that
cops will play a central role
during the pandemic.
“I am not making my decisions
based on a very few
interactions that were handled
poorly or went bad, I
make my decisions based on
the millions of interactions
that are going right,” de Blasio
said.
Atunbi said that the offi -
cers he encountered on that
evening were not taking
the mayor’s health directives
seriously and that they
acted as if they were above
the law.
“They just shrugged,” he
said. “How are you supposed
to uphold the law, but you
guys are breaking the law?”
Protesters met at Foley Square, then marched to Police Headquarters to protest the NYPD’s violent
social distancing enforcement in black and brown communities. Photo by Jon Farina
Continued from page 1
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