Conflicting Conclusions Drawn After Officers Enter a Brooklyn Apartment
By COLIN MOYNIHAN — Wednesday, April 13th, 2016 ‘The New York Times’
After three police officers without a warrantentered a Brooklyn apartment in March 2013 and questioned those inside, two separate investigations of the matter arrived at starkly different conclusions.
The Internal Affairs Bureau of the New York Police Department deemed a complaint — that the officers had conducted an improper search — “unsubstantiated.” The Civilian Complaint Review Board, in contrast, found that the senior officer involved had abused his authority.
While investigators for both entities spent months obtaining video evidence, contacting witnesses and compiling files that exceeded 200 pages, records show one notable difference: Those working for the review board questioned all three of the officers; those with Internal Affairs interviewed only one.
The review board found that the senior officer, Capt. Stephen Espinoza, a Brooklyn North vice and narcotics commander, had approved entering the apartment without proper justification, then prosecuted him before an administrative law judge. A police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of rules prohibiting the disclosure of personnel matters said last week that Captain Espinoza had been found guilty and disciplined with the loss of an unspecified number of vacation days.
Allegations of unlawful searches are a persistent complaint against the city’s police officers, but the March 2013 episode stands out because it was captured by security cameras and occurred in the Crown Heights apartment of a man who, two months earlier, had led a protest outside the 77th Precinct station house, accusing officers assigned there of having attacked him.
The man, Jabbar Campbell, later sued the city, saying the officers had assaulted, injured and falsely arrested him. His lawsuit remains active.
A lawyer for Mr. Campbell recently asked a State Supreme Court judge to penalize the city for withholding the Internal Affairs and review board reports. Lawyers for the city countered that they were in “substantial compliance with all court ordered discovery,” and turned over the reports.
The events at issue began when Mr. Campbell was arrested on Jan. 13, 2013, while he was hosting a gay-pride party. He was charged with attempted assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and possession of marijuana and Ecstasy. The drug charges were later dismissed, and he was acquitted of the other charges in May 2013.
Mr. Campbell said officers had beaten him in a building hallway while shouting anti-gay epithets during the arrest. A criminal complaint included a statement from an officer who said Mr. Campbell had pushed a sergeant, Juan Moreno, but the officer later testified that he had not seen that happen. Footage from a security camera attached to the building showed Sergeant Moreno pointing the lens away from the front door before entering.
The police returned to Mr. Campbell’s apartment on March 1, 2013, when he was not home and just days before he was to appear in court on the January charges. Cameras in the apartment captured footage of three men wearing jackets labeled “N.Y.P.D.” entering through an open door and collecting identification from more than half a dozen people who were there at the time.
Eric Subin, the lawyer for Mr. Campbell, called the March 1 visit by Captain Espinoza, who wasaccompanied by Detective Matthew Zito and Officer Jonas Bazile, retaliatory.
Records show that Detective Zito was named in four federal lawsuits filed in 2013 and 2014 alleging civil rights violations unrelated to the visit to Mr. Campbell’s home. The city settled at least three of the suits for amounts that the Law Department would not disclose. Officer Bazile was named in three such suits from 2009 to 2011, records show. One suit was dismissed. The others were settled for damages of $20,000 and $100,000.
The Internal Affairs inquiry found that Brooklyn North narcotics officers had begun surveillance of Mr. Campbell’s apartment soon after his arrest, when an unnamed person said marijuana was being sold in his apartment. Those observations yielded “negative results,” records show.
Internal Affairs documents show that memo entries written by Officer Bazile and Detective Zito on March 1, 2013, made note of a smell of marijuanacoming from Mr. Campbell’s apartment. Detective Zito wrote that he had seen “marijuana cigars in plain view,” but told investigators during an interview that he had only seen “cigars commonly used for marijuana,” according to records.
An Internal Affairs index sheet does not list interviews with Officer Bazile or Captain Espinoza. In December 2013, investigators closed the inquiry, writing that “the investigation was unable to prove or disprove” whether the officers had conducted an improper search.
Investigators with the Civilian Complaint Review Board obtained a record of the three officers’ written plans for March 1, 2013, which called for them only to conduct vice enforcement at social clubs and nightclubs that evening.
In his interview with the review board, Captain Espinoza said that a lieutenant, Lawrence Hammond, had asked him that night to add observation of Mr. Campbell’s building, connected to the drug investigation. Captain Espinoza said he had entered to familiarize himself with the layout for future undercover work and had gone to Mr. Campbell’s apartment on the second floor after smelling marijuana.
Captain Espinoza said he and the other officers had entered the apartment because he saw a person inside smoking marijuana, and because it appeared that the entire group there could have been trespassing.
The review board’s investigators determined that the officers did not have the “consent, exigent circumstances or an emergency” to justify entering Mr. Campbell’s apartment. They referred Captain Espinoza to the board’s Administrative Prosecution Unit; it handles cases in which “charges and specifications,” the most serious discipline the panel can render, have been recommended.
At his trial in October, at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Captain Espinoza repeated his assertion that a person had been smoking marijuana inside Mr. Campbell’s apartment. He said that before entering he had seen “a gentleman with a lit marijuana cigarette” next to a computer.
A prosecutor, Jonathan Fogel, challenged that claim, showing footage from two cameras that included a view of the man at the computer table before and after Captain Espinoza entered.
“Would you agree with me, Captain, that during the three minutes of video I played for you, two or three minutes I played for you, at no point in the video does it appear that this gentleman seated by a computer is smoking marijuana?” Mr. Fogel asked.
“I would say that based on the angle in the video, I do not see it,” Captain Espinoza replied.
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