New York Criminal Lawyers Blog

With so many people exercising their first amendment rights to protest, clashes between protesters and police have become common place. While there are some legitimate uses of force and arrests for disorderly conduct, there have also been numerous baseless arrests, indiscriminate uses of force and plainly criminal assaults on protestors by the New York City Police Department.

Our New York City civil rights lawyers are committing to seeking compensation for OWS victims of police misconduct, including false arrest, malicious prosecution and police brutality. It is important that the police who engage in misconduct be held accountable for their actions and it is the only way that our first amendment rights to protest will be preserved. Now technology has ensured that a majority of the police misconduct will be captured on camera, with so many Occupy Wall Street protesters having phones with video cameras that record the vivid images of police brutality.

Our White Plains criminal defense lawyer Michael Joseph won a major victory on behalf of a police brutality victim. One of our clients was falsely arrested and maliciously prosecuted by the White Plains police department. They charged our client with disorderly conduct under two different sections of the disorderly conduct law, as a pre-text to justify their unlawful assault of our client.

Our White Plains criminal defense attorneys convinced a City of White Plains Judge that no crime occurred, even if the lies which the police officers told were accepted as true. As a result all charges against our client were dismissed. It is worth noting that our client filed a cross complaint for assault against the police officers, which would have been a felony level assault based on the severity of the injuries. Unbelievably, despite clear evidence of wrongdoing and injuries that were unexplainable, except for as the result of an assault, the Westchester District Attorney's office refused to prosecute the officers and instead continued to prosecute our client.

Our Westchester criminal defense lawyers are committed to making sure that police brutality victims are exonerated in the Criminal Courts and obtain justice through civil lawsuits against the police officers responsible for misconduct. We have even represented police officers against other police officers who target them and falsely accuse them of criminal activity to satisfy petty gripes.

Now our New York civil rights lawyers will file a civil lawsuits against the White Plains officers involved and hopefully, the White Plains police department will start to take police misconduct seriously, but I am not optimistic.