NEW YORK– A retired African-American NYPD detective and his wife are battling charges in the State Supreme Court after an alleged physical altercation with officers that arrested their son.
The parents claim their son was racially profiled.
The middle aged-couple were summoned to the police station after they found out their 13-year-old son Devin Almonor was picked up by the police. The mother, Wilma Dore-Almonor, 52, was told that her son was stopped and frisked.
“This happens all the time in my neighborhood,” Ms. Dore-Almonor said. “I felt very angry.”
Police say Devin was arrested because he was part of a rowdy group and had reached toward his waistband as the police approached.
Varying accounts of what happened after the couple arrived to the police station were told in court; however the accounts do assert that the couple was detained by force.
Father and retired NYPD detective Merault Almonor, 50, is charged with felony assault, and Ms. Dore-Almonor charged with resisting arrest and trespassing.
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Her husband drove her to the precinct, she said, and while he looked for a parking place, she went inside. She testified that she told the officer at the front desk, in a calm yet pointed tone, who she was and that she was there to pick up her son.
She said a woman in the back of the station house told her that she would have to leave if she did not calm down. Ms. Dore-Almonor told them she was not going anywhere without her son, she said.
Eventually, the officer who had arrested her son, Brian Dennis, came out from the back.
“I know that you’re a racist,” she recalled telling Officer Dennis, “because I’ve seen you in action.”
The argument escalated, Ms. Dore-Almonor said, and Officer Dennis told other officers to arrest her. She said a female officer punched her in the mouth, and the next thing she knew, the officers were pulling her arms back and taking her to the ground.
“They kept kicking me,” Ms. Dore-Almonor said, “stepping on my back and they were laughing.”
“I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I didn’t know why they were doing this to me.”
At that moment, she said, her husband came in and said: “What are you doing? That’s my wife.”
The police took him to the ground as well, she said, while he stretched his arms out and said, “I’m a cop, I’m a cop.”
Prosecutors have a different version of what happened. They say Devin Almonor was arrested because he was part of a rowdy group and had reached toward his waistband as the police approached.
Ms. Dore-Almonor, according to a criminal complaint, was swearing and hostile when she came into the station house, demanding to see her son. She refused to leave when asked and was in a part of the station house closed to the public, the complaint said.
As the officers were arresting her, prosecutors have said, Mr. Almonor tried to stop them and punched a female officer in the face.
Mr. Almonor was initially charged with misdemeanors and released, but the charges were elevated to felony assault a few weeks later.
Prosecutors say the change came after the extent of the officer’s injuries were known. The couple says the charges were elevated in retaliation for a lawsuit they filed against the city and several of the officers involved in the episode.
The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Wednesday, after closing arguments.
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