A slew of lawsuits have been filed against the NYPD for allegedly causing serious injuries and making false arrests during a rash of protests over the killing of homeless man Jordan Neely inside a subway car last year, court records show.
Protesters filed litigation against top police brass and various officers in the past two weeks, including one person accusing a top NYPD official of excessive force, and another suit filed by an activist who recently won a nearly $900,000 settlement in a similar lawsuit.
The arrests were all related to protests and vigils that erupted in May 2023, when Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator was killed by former Marine Daniel Penny, who placed him in a chokehold aboard a subway car after the homeless man shouted threats to passengers.
One suit was filed by Shakim McKnight, who was attending a vigil on Crosby and Houston streets on May 8, near where Neely was killed at the Broadway-Lafayette subway station a week earlier, court records state.
McKnight’s suit claims deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry personally grabbed her and slammed her to the ground.
News of the suit, first reported by the Daily News, prompted the release of a barely one-second long body cam video claiming to show McKnight running away from police and slamming into a metal pole.
Video of another angle shared by other users show Daughtry then hurling the protester into the pavement, as other officers rush to restrain and cuff McKnight.
The suit states McKnight suffered various injuries as a result, but a police source told The Post only that “the individual sustained an injury when they ran into a pole.”
“The pictures and video speak for themselves,” said McKnight’s attorney, John Paul De Verna, to the Daily News.
“Ms. McKnight was brutally assaulted while exercising her constitutional right to film during the remembrance vigil. Her grave and serious injuries were compounded by a delay in medical attention,” De Verna said. “To make matters worse, to my knowledge, no disciplinary action was taken against Kaz Daughtry or any other of the officers involved.”
De Verna is also suing on behalf of a well-known activist Jose Lasalle, a Bronx man who runs a so-called copwatch chapter and was awarded a massive $860,000 settlement in 2019 after accusing officers of false arrest, imprisonment and conspiracy.
Another woman arrested at a May 6 protest inside an Upper East Side subway station claimed in a separate lawsuit that overly-tight police handcuffs left her with a fractured wrist.
The woman, Lisa Kelly, states in her suit that officers knocked her to the ground on the subway platform, and another wrapped his arm around her neck and choked her from behind.
She was handcuffed so tightly that she claims she soon lost feeling in her right shoulder and left wrist, her suit states. During a search, she claims another officer groped her underneath her bra.
Officers refused to loosen the cuffs, her suit claims, and emergency room doctors later told her she had a fractured wrist and had suffered a concussion.
Her charges were dropped later that month, the suit says.
