By Alex Ginsberg
New York Post
NEW YORK — A Brooklyn transit cop stared down three of his brother officers yesterday, telling a rapt jury how he saw one of them shove a retractable baton into a man’s buttocks as they tried to arrest him.
Officer Kevin Maloney, 27 - an obviously uncomfortable star witness in the Brooklyn DA’s case in Supreme Court against the cops - said he was helping cuff the prisoner, Michael Mineo, as he lay on the floor of the Prospect Park subway station when he saw fellow officer Richard Kern gripping the baton.
“It was pressed on Michael Mineo’s left buttock,” said Maloney, sipping water and straightening his suit jacket frequently. “I saw it move from left to right . . . Yes, there was pressure being applied. It went from left to right, into Michael Mineo’s butt crack.”
Asked how much of the six-inch baton vanished in the folds of Mineo’s blue boxer shorts, Maloney said, “I would say about a half-inch to an inch was out of my sight.”
He also reported hearing Mineo shout, “Why did you stick a walkie-talkie up my ass?” after which he heard Kern say that the perp was an “EDP” - an emotionally disturbed person.
Minutes later, after he, Kern and two other officers, Alex Cruz and Noel Jugraj, put Mineo into a patrol car outside the station, Maloney said he saw Mineo reach his cuffed hands around his waist and show them a fingertip.
“There’s blood on it,” Maloney recounted.
The damning testimony was the first solid corroboration of Mineo’s claims that he was sodomized with an object after being wrestled to the ground following a chase from the street down into the station at around 1:30 p.m. Oct. 15, 2008.
Even Jugraj, who was down on the ground with Kern, Maloney and Mineo, testified last week that he did not see Kern do anything, nor did he hear Mineo complain specifically about being anally assaulted.
Kern, 26, is charged with carrying out that assault. Cruz, 28, and another officer, Andrew Morales, 27, are accused of covering it up. Neither Maloney nor Jugraj was charged.
Lawyers for the cops accused Maloney of telling prosecutors just what they needed to make the case in the hopes of staying out of trouble himself. They cited, in particular, the fact that he didn’t immediately tell his supervisors about the incident.
Maloney countered that he only spoke up when he heard the police inquiry was zeroing in on Cruz.
“I came forward because the investigation was focusing on someone else, and it shouldn’t be,” he said.
Copyright 2010 New York Post