A prison chaplain was awarded $4 million after police attacked him.
Chaplain Christopher Graham was attacked and arrested in September 2010 after the mother of his children called police and told them he attacked her with a machete.
When police arrived, “They thought I was some thug,” Graham tells the New York Daily News. “They pulled [my] hat off my head and pulled dreadlocks out of my head. They slammed me to the floor and held me down. One of them was stepping on my neck and my face. The other one was trying to break my leg.”
All the while, Graham kept mum on his occupation until one officer at the 77th Precinct in New York noticed an ID tag hanging from Graham’s neck.
Graham was initially charged with misdemeanor assault, menacing, criminal possession of a weapon, resisting arrest and harassment, but the judge dropped the charges.
Though the jury is awarding Graham $3.95 million in compensatory damages, the Corporation Counsel is considering challenging the verdict.
“We review, in a variety of ways, all allegations of officer misconduct,” Deputy Chief Kim Royster tells the Daily News. “A [verdict in] a civil case does not constitute a finding or even evidence that an officer has engaged in any misconduct.”
