NYC Cops Eyed in
Sodomy Case

A man who alleges he was sodomized by New York police may see a trial before a grand jury, Kings County district attorney Charles Hynes said on Monday. Michael Mineo, 24, said he was held down by four officers who held him at a subway station, while one officer violated him with a radio antenna on October 15, Newsday reports.

"On the basis of preliminary conclusions of the early stages of my investigation and a review of the medical evidence concerning the allegations that Michael Mineo was brutally assaulted by four police officers, I have ordered a special investigative grand jury to be impaneled," Hynes said in a statement.

Mineo was approached by police for smoking marijuana outside the Prospect Park subway station in Brooklyn. A confrontation erupted, and Mineo ran into the station with police chasing after him. After they caught him, Mineo said, he was shoved to the ground, one officer held his legs, another held his shoulders, and another pulled down his pants. Then, he said, an officer shoved the police radio antenna into his rectum, suffering several "small rectal tears," according to the New York Daily News.

New York police department spokesman and deputy chief Michael Collins said that there is "no evidence of wrongdoing" by the officers.

Mineo has found an ally in the Reverend Al Sharpton, an outspoken opponent of police misconduct. Sharpton has had Mineo as a guest on his radio show and has visited him in the hospital.

"I don't care if the cops were black and he was white or vice versa," Sharpton said. "We cannot have a system where people...suffer some kind of physical damage and they not be objectively and thoroughly investigated to hold the police accountable if a crime occurred."

Sharpton was also a critic of the NYPD after the Abner Louima case in 1997, in which the victim was sodomized with a broomstick in a police department bathroom. Officer Justin Volpe, who initially denied the charges, later pleaded guilty and was charged with first-degree assault and aggravated sexual assault; he was sentenced to 30 years without parole. Fellow officer Charles Schwarz's conviction was overturned on a technicality, but he later pleaded guilty to perjury and served five years. (Michelle Garcia, The Advocate)