STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The city will pay $70,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging an NYPD officer let CCTV footage of a suspect's beating get erased before the suspect or his lawyer could review it.
Keashon Gillam, 22, alleged in a federal lawsuit that an NYPD "VIPER" camera recorded an Oct. 8, 2011 incident outside the Stapleton Houses where officers pummeled him badly enough to leave him with a concussion, medical staples and a scar on his head.
One of the officers who worked inside the housing complex's camera room rushed out to join the beating, the lawsuit alleged, then failed to flag the footage for archiving, meaning that, by NYPD policy, it would be erased after seven days, the lawsuit alleged.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser dismissed the case, after Gillam and the city agreed to a settlement a month earlier.
"It was right in front of video cameras, and the video evidence was recorded over before we could get it, and we tried very hard," said Gillam's lawyer, Gregory Antollino. "We didn't even find out that it had been recorded over until years later. And so I think the policy with regard to those tapes needs to be looked at so that the truth can be preserved."
According to the NYPD patrol guide, recordings made by the city's Video-Interactive Patrol Enhanced Response, or VIPER cameras, are erased and destroyed every seven days, unless the recording is the subject of an incident report.
"I knew there was cameras out there, because basically I've been living out here all my life," Gillam said in an interview with the Advance Thursday. "For them to say that had no videotape, I knew that was BS.... Me and my mother went to get the tape so many times."
SUIT FILED IN 2012
Gillam filed his lawsuit in December 2012, while the criminal case against him was still pending.
According to the lawsuit, the officers had been chasing a "big fish" suspect, and when they couldn't catch him, "turned to a group of young black men standing near 218 Broad St."
Gillam, who was then 18, was standing outside with his cousin, tried to walk away from two officers, Christopher Parco and Timothy Lake, the lawsuit alleged. He had a small amount of marijuana on him, according to the lawsuit.
Moments earlier, Gillam told the Advance, he had watched a man who had been sitting on a bench run as soon as police showed up at the housing development.
The officers yelled, "Get the (expletive) up on the gate, get the (expletive) up on the gate!" Gillam recalled.
"Me and my cousin, we're going home, we're not doing nothing, so we didn't think they were talking to us," he said.
Parco grabbed him, "spun him to the ground" and bashed his head with a police radio, and Lake joined in, punching and kicking him, the lawsuit alleged.
NO 'INCIDENT REPORT'
Officer Daniel Magee was watching the scene unfold in the VIPER surveillance room at the Stapleton Houses and rushed out to join the two officers, the lawsuit alleged, beating Gillam after he was cuffed.
"Although it was procedure to do so, Magee should have prepared an incident report to flag the video of the incident, which was caught on camera. He purposely did not to protect Parco and his brethren from being charged with excessive force," the lawsuit alleged.
At one point, the lawsuit alleged, Lake cut his finger on a safety razor while searching Gillam's pocket, flicked blood into Gillam's face and referred to him as a "n----r."
Gillam suffered a concussion and needed medical staples in his head, the lawsuit alleged.
He was planning to start classes at ASA College in Manhattan the next day, he told the Advance, but after recovering from his injuries, he could only focus on classes for the first couple of months.
"It just took a toll on me, I just didn't want to keep going to school every day just thinking about that day," he said. Gillam said he now works as a security guard and plans to return to school.
ACQUITTED AT TRIAL
Gillam was ultimately acquitted of resisting arrest charges at a bench trial this past March, and was adjudicated as a youthful offender on a marijuana possession charge in April.
His cousin, who was also arrested, was only charged with marijuana possession, and received an adjournment contemplating dismissal.
The city's Civilian Complaint Review Board and the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau investigated the incident, but did not substantiate any allegations against Lake or Parco, the lawsuit alleged. Magee was "retrained" over his handling of the VIPER video, according to the lawsuit.
The NYPD has not yet responded to a request made Wednesday seeking both comment on the case and general information about the department's policies regarding VIPER recordings.
"Settling the case was in the best interest of the city," said city Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci.
Court records show the three named officers have been defendants in multiple lawsuits against the NYPD. One case involving both Lake and Magee is still pending, while the rest have ended with settlements.
Last September, Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch criticized the city for settling so many cases against police officers, referring to them as "quick buck" lawsuits that "have a secondary impact of seriously injuring the reputation of good police officers who often are not given the opportunity to defend themselves."
TWICE THE AVERAGE PAYOUT
The city has spent $428 million between January 2009 and October 2014 to settle nearly 11,000 NYPD-related lawsuits, according to numbers provided by the Law Department to the website MuckRock.com.
Gillam received more than double the $33,000 average paid out in those cases.
"I think the city was fair. I think it was a fair settlement," Antollino said.
While he's grateful for the settlement money, Gillam said, "I'd rather see officers like that off the streets."
Antollino called for the NYPD to revise its policy on deleting VIPER recordings.
"Who knows what the tape would have shown? But we think that it would have shown exactly what we alleged, and I think that the city policies on these VIPER cameras have got to change," Antollino said. "As it is, they record over them every week, and only if they get flagged do they save them."
Lawyer Jason Leventhal, who regularly handles cases against the NYPD, including several unrelated lawsuits against the officers named in Gillam's suit, also called for better handling of VIPER footage.
"Videos provide the most compelling evidence to determine what happened during a police encounter. The destruction of videos strikes at the heart of the integrity of our justice system," he said. "The NYPD should immediately institute policies requiring the prompt examination and preservation of potential video evidence to ensure that the truth prevails."