Student Sues Trigger-Happy NYC Cops

By DAN MCCUE
Courthouse News Service
Aug. 11, 2011

MANHATTAN (CN) - New York City police shot 46 times into a Harlem crowd to break up a fight between two men, wounding an innocent college student, and when an officer saw him bleeding from the gunshot wound, the cop told him to "Get the f-k out of here," the student says in a $7 million federal complaint.

Antoine Brown says he attended the annual block party on Lenox Avenue near 144th Street on Aug. 8, 2010. Around 3 a.m., two men he did not know got into a fist fight that prompted a call to the police.

New York's Finest responded "by shooting an astounding forty-six bullets into a crowd of over 150 people," Brown says in his complaint. He says he "did not know the men, did not know why they were fighting, and did not participate in the fight. Rather, Mr. Brown was just an innocent bystander talking to a friend when he was shot by one of the barrage of bullets fired by the defendant police officers."

Brown was shot at least once, he says.

"Upon being shot, plaintiff made his way to a nearby community center, where a police officer approached plaintiff, told him to get on the ground, and asked him what had happened," the complaint states. "The police officer next told plaintiff, who was bleeding from the gunshot wound, to 'Get the f--k out of here.'" (Obscenity elided in complaint.)

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