EXCLUSIVE: Judge orders rare phone probe to find video that may show NYPD cops beating mentally ill man
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/judge-orders-rare-phone-probe-fatal-nypd-video-article-1.2703389?cid=bitly
A federal judge has initiated an independent — and what may be an unprecedented — investigation of possible tampering with a cell phone that allegedly contained a video of a fatal confrontation between NYPD cops and an emotionally disturbed man, the Daily News has learned.
Brooklyn Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann ordered the city to hand over the cell phone to Stroz Friedberg, a highly respected cybersecurity firm that she chose, for forensic examination and retrieval of the video.
“If the video does not presently exist on the cell phone, Stroz Friedberg shall attempt to determine whether the video previously existed on the cell phone, and if so, whether and when the video was deleted or the cell phone was subject to any tampering or wiping,” Mann stated in the order.
Sources told The News that the cell phone does not presently contain a video of the June 8, 2015, incident that ended in the death of Mario Ocasio and is the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Mann, the chief magistrate judge for the Eastern District of New York, shocked lawyers for the city and Ocasio’s mother on Wednesday when she announced that forensic findings will remain confidential for the time being, and suggested that the parties pay the $30,000 cost of the analysis.
“No one has ever heard of a judge doing this before,” said a knowledgeable source.
Citing an ongoing police internal investigation, the city had reluctantly provided Mann with four CDs containing data downloaded from the cell phone that belonged to witness Kashif Osagie.
Then last January, the judge ordered the city to deliver the phone itself for independent examination.
The suit contends that the video will show that cops beat Ocasio with batons and that his death was caused, in part, by excessive force.
Cops were summoned to Ocasio’s Bronx apartment by his girlfriend Geneice Lloyd who reported that he was “bugging out,” according to court papers.
His cause of death was cardiac arrest “during excited delirium due to acute intoxication by synthetic cannabinoid (marijuana),” the filings say.
Osagie started recording, then handed off the phone to Lloyd who continued recording what transpired.
Osagie told The News that if his phone does not contain a video of Ocasio being restrained, “it was either altered or deleted.”
The city has called Ocasio’s death tragic, but strongly denied the cops did anything improper.