Armando Hernandez and Adrian Cruz were just hangin’ in Chicago’s Humbolt Park Tuesday night when the cops showed up. Those cops told the two to take off. But when they told officers it was 9:36 p.m., not 11 p.m. -- when the park closes the cops got angry, roughed them up, cuffed them and took them to the station. Once there they say they 45 minutes of verbal abuse, punches to the back and stomach, slaps to the face, and repeated whacks from a nightstick.
"I didn't want to say anything else because I didn't want to get hit no more, so I stayed quiet and put my head down after I got hit," Cruz said.
"I'm guessing he (the officer involved in the station beating) had a bad day. I'm guessing he was mad. He usually got mad when I asked him serious questions. What's the charge? What's your name? Why are you doing this? That ticked him off a lot," Hernandez said.
The police charged the men with public intoxication, though they say they were not drinking.
But wait - Hernandez's cell phone recorded some of the incident. Ooops!
WLS reports the audio on the cell phone recording is muffled and difficult to understand. But you clearly can hear an unidentified man yelling and using profanity. You can also hear noises. The two young men say the sound is the officer hitting them.
Their attorney says his clients had done nothing wrong, and police beat them for no reason. "The language that was used and the brutality that was offered, clearly there should be action," said Jeff Granich, attorney.
"Looks specifically to be one officer. Both of these men were beaten. Both of these men were handcuffed while they were beaten. I can't conceive of any situation why two men would be handcuffed and beaten on a municipal violation," the complainants' lawyer, Jeffrey Granich, said.
Granich said both men have a clean record.
NBC5 says the Chicago police are investigating the men's claims. Sources: NBC5 (Chicago), WLS, Chicago Sun Times
No comments:
Post a Comment