Small Government
by digby
At least he knows he’s free:
Tom Mukherjee said it was hard to hear recordings of what he believes are Denver police officers torturing his 6-foot, 230-pound son until he shrieked in agony and begged for his life.
The long screams were captured on a friend’s cell phone recording of the clash on the night of April 10 when police responded to a noise complaint about Rohit Mukherjee’s going-away party in his Lower Downtown apartment.
“He’s crying out, ‘Please, help me!'” the father told 7NEWS Thursday.
When police asked if they could enter the apartment, the University of Colorado business graduate asked if officers had a warrant, the father said.
“That’s what set them off,” Tom Mukherjee said.
In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday, Rohit Mukherjee accuses three police officers of bursting into his apartment and slamming him against a door.
He accuses Officer Abbegayle Dorn of choking him with her forearm across his windpipe until he couldn’t breathe, according to the lawsuit that named Dorn, two male officers and the Denver Police Department as defendants. Police have identified one of the male officers as Richard Fischer, but the second male officer’s name has not been released.
Dorn is a professional fitness model who was a contestant on the “American Gladiator” television show in 2008. Her gladiator show bio described Dorn as 5 foot 6 inches, 152 pounds.
Mukherjee said with his hands cuffed behind his back, the officers plowed his face across the floor in a “wheelbarrow fashion,” the lawsuit said.
As he was pinned on the floor, Rohit said a male officer repeatedly pounded his knee into the man’s jaw and bent his fingers backward, while Dorn stood rocking back-and-forth on his ankle, the lawsuit said.
Rohit said an officer also smashed his face into the walls of the hallway and elevator as he was taken to a patrol car, the lawsuit said.
“I believe that it was torture,” Tom Mukherjee said. “Why do they keep trying to break his jaw? Where is the humanity?”
The father gave 7NEWS photographs showing Rohit’s face with red scrapes and swollen fingers and knuckles. Rohit also suffered nerve damage caused by excessively tight handcuffs, the father said.
Party guests used their cell phones to videotape or photograph the officers’ alleged abuse. But Dorn seized the phones and dumped them in a bowl of water “to destroy evidence,” according the lawsuit.
However, a computer laboratory hired by the Mukherjees recovered video from one of the damaged cell phones.
The video showed Dorn snatching a cell phone from a party guest as a male friend lies on the floor in police custody and a man loudly curses the officers and vows to sue the police department. Tom Mukherjee said police had already taken his son to the patrol car by the time the video was shot.
Denver police spokesman Lt. Matt Murray said the department is investigating the incident but declined to discuss details of the ongoing probe. He said the three officers continue to work in District 6, which oversees downtown Denver.
Tom Mukherjee said his son is an upstanding young man who “never, ever” had any trouble with the law.
Rohit Mukherjee is a United States citizen who was born in New Jersey and grew up in Florida and Colorado, his father said. His family lives in Centennial, and Rohit graduated from Cherry Creek High School.
Surely you know what’s coming next:
But the father said police officers repeated called Rohit a “f—— Arab.”
This primer on how to record the police by Radley Balko is useful. It takes a brave person to do it, but if you have what it takes, this article gives a lot of helpful tips.
ht to kvl