e number of brutality claims has tripled in a decade, to 2,735 between June 1996 and June 1997, according to city Comptroller statistics.Between June 1996 and June 1997, the city settled 503 police misconduct cases, taking only twenty-four to court, where it won sixteen. Yet, as far as reforms are concerned, settlements provide little public information about incidents of police misconduct and there are few repercussions for an officer who is the subject of such a lawsuit, for which the city pays (Human Rights Watch, 2). On July 4, 1996, Nathaniel Levi Gaines, Jr., was shot in the back and killed by Officer Colecchia on a Bronx subway platform after Gaines had been frisked and Colecchia knew he carried no weapons. The victim was black; the officer was white. Colecchia had a history of complaints - three for excessive force in 1994; all had been found unsubstantiated, though he was found to have given false statements to superiors investigating the complaints (Human Rights Watch 2). In the early morning hours of August 9, 1997, police officers arrested Abner Louima, a legal Haitian immigrant, outside a Brooklyn nightclub following altercations between police and club goers. During the trip to the station house, officers allegedly stopped twice to beat Louima, who was handcuffed. At the 70th Precinct station house, two officers, Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, allegedly shouted racial slurs and Volpe allegedly shoved a wooden stick (believed to be the handle of a toilet plunger or broom) into Louima's rectum and mouth. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the fourteen officers who were either arrested, suspended, transferred or placed on desk duty in the week following the alleged torture of Louima had been accused, among them, of eleven prior unsubstantiated excessive force complaints and of another five misconduct complaints that had been ruled inconclusive or resolved through conciliation (Human Rights Watch 1). On Decemb...
