A Brooklyn man has filed papers to sue the city over an alleged hate crime committed by the NYPD. The Daily News reports that on Sunday night around 2:50 a.m., two officers came to Jabbar Campbell’s Crown Heights apartment following a noise complaint. Campbell was hosting a gay pride party for about 80 people and some of the partygoers were dressed in drag. Those officers left after telling guests outside the apartment to keep it down, but about ten minutes later another group of officers arrived and rang the buzzer. Campbell saw an officer turn a security camera in his vestibule, and when he went downstairs, they were banging on his door with flashlights. “There was a sergeant, he yelled ‘get him!’ and that’s when I got attacked,” Campbell told the Post. “They kept saying, ‘stop resisting’ but I wasn’t resisting. I didn’t have any time to respond.”
Campbell claims that two officers held his arms back while one pushed his head down, and another officer repeatedly punched him in the face. “They were yelling ‘you f—ing fag!’ and ‘homo!’” he said. “I couldn’t block the blows. I was fighting to stay conscious [but] I was blacking out because of the hits I was taking.” Campbell says he was left with a black eye, a split lip, and a bloody mouth, and was taken to the hospital for treatment.
According to the NYPD’s account, Campbell refused to “discontinue a party,” pushed an officer, attempted to flee, and behaved “belligerently” while police tried to take him into custody. He was charged with resisting arrest, attempted assault, and pot possession. Campbell has released footage of the officer tampering with his surveillance camera. “They were trying to conceal the evidence by turning the camera away,” says his lawyer, Herb Subin. “They committed a hate crime inside a gay pride event.”
