The 12-year-old boy described his harrowing experience with police. It happened after he and two others, ages 13 and 14, allegedly broke into their middle school on February 28. They say 10 cops from Mount Vernon and Yonkers showed up to stop them, and that they were beaten.
"And the handcuffs was still on," the boy said. "And they were still hitting me...telling me to shut up and calling me a [N-word] over and over and over. Then they was putting my face into the dirt where i couldn't breathe."
The boy needed 18 stitches on his ear. His lawyer says another boy was mauled by a police dog, and that much of the alleged abuse was after police had already caught the boys.
"The cops knew they were dealing with kids," attorney Jonathan Lovett said. "One child is an asthmatic. Police choked him from behind, nearly to death."
One sergeant from Mount Vernon named in the lawsuit is the same sergeant who allegedly roughed up a 14-year-old boy's mother just three weeks earlier after she ran a stop sign.
"As I was arrested, sergeant supervisor Marcucilli told me if it was 200 years ago, he would've slapped the "s" out of me," plaintiff Stacia Fogg said. "And he said the word."
Meanwhile, Mount Vernon's mayor and police commissioner are promising a full investigation.
"Nothing has occured that has changed our determination to get to the facts," commissioner David Chong said.
Mayor Clinton Young urged any cops who may wish to come forward to do so immediately.
"Come to me," he said. "If you are uncomfortable or if you feel nothing is going to be done, come to me and let's discuss it."
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