Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
A Brooklyn man says he was left with a painful reminder from an encounter with NYPD cops: A prong from a Taser had to be surgically removed from his back.
Jonathan Zimmerman, 26, is suing the city and the two officers, saying that after he double-parked, he suffered through an excruciating Tasering that left him with a dime-sized scar.
"I was hurt because I don't think I should have gone through what I went through that night," he said of the April 2010 ordeal.
Zimmerman, a security guard, said he was sitting in his car with a female friend outside her Bedford-Stuyvesant home when uniformed cops wrote him a ticket for double-parking.
After he and the woman started to argue with the cops about the summons, one officer ordered him out of the car. He refused.
He says the cop yanked the keys from the ignition and Maced him while he was still strapped in his seat belt. Next Zimmerman felt something "very, very painful," he recalled. He was zapped, pulled out of his car and Tasered two more times, he said.
An NYPD spokesman said cops ordered Zimmerman to move his car but he instead talked back and had to be restrained. Doctors later dislodged an inch-long spur from his back. All charges against him, including resisting arrest and disorderly conduct,were dismissed.
Zimmerman, of Brownsville said cops routinely stop black men for no good reason: "I see stuff like this a lot," he said, "and I've never seen anybody go through this for a parking ticket."
Source: NY DailyNews
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from New Jersey. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Follow him on Facebook.