Friday, November 04, 2022
NYPD officer accused of stomping on woman’s head at George Floyd protest
An NYPD officer has been hit with departmental charges for violently kicking a woman in the head during a Bronx George Floyd protest, the Daily News has learned.
Defending himself in his departmental trial at NYPD Headquarters Wednesday — the agency's first Hasidic officer — Lt. Joel Witriol said there was so much chaos and fighting going at the June 14, 2020, protest at the corner of E. 136th St. and Brook Ave. in Mott Haven that anything could have happened.
But he's absolutely sure he didn't purposefully stomp on the face of a woman protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
"There's a difference between chaos and doing something on purpose," Witriol explained. "Nothing was done on purpose.
"I did not kick her on purpose, and I don't believe I kicked her at all," he said.
But the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated abuse-of-force charges against Witriol for assaulting the woman, identified as Alexandra Huber, while she was down on the ground.
Body camera footage and medical reports all conclude Witriol kicked Huber while she was being subdued for not complying with former Mayor de Blasio's 8 p.m. curfew order, CCRB officials said.
The most damning piece of evidence was the body-worn camera footage from another officer which shows Witriol stomping on the ground followed by a woman's scream, Nicole Jardim of the CCRB's Administrative Prosecution Unit said. The footage doesn't actually show Huber getting hit.
"[Witriol's] looking straight down at her. He lifts his leg up and he stomps," Jardim said, describing the video during the one day departmental trial.
Huber suffered a black eye and a cut on her nose and was too traumatized to testify in person Wednesday.
If a department judge finds Witriol guilty of abuse of force, he could be fined 20 vacation days.
The lieutenant said the footage doesn't show a stomping, but him losing his balance because of the "oil, water and urine" protesters were throwing at cops.
"I had just been maced," Witriol said. "I felt it in my mouth all night."
He claimed he did grab Huber and attempted to place her under arrest for violating the curfew. He admits to swing her around, but said he never knocked her to the ground and kicked her.
Instead he handed her to other cops who took her down with a leg sweep.
"She was still resisting when I handed her off," said Witriol, who admits that he never turned his body-worn camera on during the protest.
"I made no contact with her head," he said.
Huber quickly hired a lawyer and plans to sue the city, Witriol's attorney Marissa Gillespie said.
"She wasn't too traumatized to get a civil attorney," she said.
Witriol joined the NYPD in 2006 and quickly moved up the ranks. In 2016, he was promoted to lieutenant and was transferred to the Housing Bureau, where he was named the integrity control officer for Public Service Area 7.
He raced over to the protest after hearing several pleas for backup over the radio. Two vehicles with guns and Molotov cocktails were intercepted on their way to join with the demonstrators, he remembered.
Protesters said cops herded them into the corner near the Millbrook Houses and struck them with batons. Video of the event shows cops swinging batons and roughly shoving people, many of whom were begging to go home, freelance photographer Gregory Berg, who was caught in the crowd, told The News.
"I got maced, a 75-year-old man got maced, a pregnant woman got maced," Berg said. "They slammed us into cars, cuffed us and left us on the street. It was some third world s--t."
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea acknowledged the cops' aggressive handling of some in the crowd afterward — and said that the protest had been infiltrated by "outside agitators" who were looking to use the event as cover to loot the neighborhood.
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