- Friday, June 22, 2012

City: YONKERS State: Section: Westchester County, New York Page: From: Source: Edition: Publication: The Journal News

Yonkers man accuses cops of illegal arrest; harassment suit claims retaliation over complaint
A city man claims in federal court that two Yonkers police officers illegally arrested, harassed and strip-searched him in retaliation for unsuccessfully trying to file a complaint against them five months earlier. Danny Squicciarini, 23, filed a 16-page lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, naming the officers and the Police Department as defendants.

Squicciarini's account of the April 2011 encounter is laden with allegations of egregious police misconduct including officers using racist slurs and other insulting language. At the time of his arrest, Squicciarini was a college student studying criminal justice in hopes of becoming a police officer, his suit states. He had taken a New York City police exam the previous July and had for a year worked as a private security guard. Squicciarini claims in the court papers that he was driving into a parking lot at the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers when an unmarked black SUV blocked his car and two plainclothes officers hopped out without identifying themselves, ordering him and his friend to step out of their vehicle. The officers patted the pair down and searched Squicciarini's car without permission, finding his textbooks and a fishing knife, which one of the officers pocketed and refused to give back before driving off. The officers are identified in the suit as "Detective DellaDonna" and "Detective DeVito." Squicciarini and his friend immediately drove to the city's Second Police Precinct to lodge a complaint, he says, but a desk sergeant refused to file one without names or badge numbers, even after Squicciarini gave detailed descriptions. Other officers suggested the two plainclothes officers might have been federal agents or state police, the suit claims. One night five months later, Squicciarini claims he was meeting friends in a Central Avenue parking lot when the same two officers pulled up and, recognizing him, searched his car again this time finding an unlit marijuana cigarette. "Oh, some cop you're supposed to be," the older officer allegedly told Squicciarini. "I still have your knife," the younger officer reportedly said, and both allegedly claimed to have known about the attempted complaint.

Squicciarini was arrested and charged with criminal marijuana possession, his suit states, and harassed on his way to getting processed. A Yonkers police spokesman referred questions to the city Corporation Counsel's Office. The mayor's spokeswoman said the city does not comment on pending litigation. Squicciarini claims he filed a civilian complaint with the Police Department in September 2011 and received a notice from the department in May 2012 stating that it had found insufficient evidence to support his claim. His federal suit seeks unspecified damages. Squicciarini's attorney, Debra Cohen, released a statement Thursday faulting Yonkers police for what she called a "pattern of failure to adequately train officers and enforce lawful procedures." "What happened to Danny Squicciarini is a warning to those who think it can't happen to them," Cohen said. "No one is immune from this type of abuse if police misconduct goes unchecked." A 2007 U.S. Justice Department investigation into police brutality in Yonkers led to a 41-page report in 2009 that found no evidence of civil rights violations.