Story highlights
Police beating of Ehud Halevy in Brooklyn was caught on video
City agrees to pay beating victim $100,000 plus legal fees in settlement
Video shows male officer hitting suspect dozens of times
New York City has agreed to pay $100,000 to a Brooklyn man whose beating by police officers was caught on surveillance video, the city law department said Tuesday.
The incident occurred on October 8, 2012, after police received a call about a dispute at the ALIYA Institute in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, police said.
There, police came upon Ehud Halevy, 22, who refused to leave the women’s portion of the center.
The community center surveillance video, obtained by CNN from the website CrownHeights.info, showed two officers beating Halevy with punches after he allegedly resisted arrest. The police department’s Internal Affairs Bureau Investigated the incident but eventually cleared both officers of wrongdoing, according to Halevy’s lawyer, Norman Siegel.
The settlement ends the lawsuit Halevy filed against the city in January 2013. In addition to the $100,000, the city will also pay Halevy’s attorney’s fees, which are still being negotiated, Siegel said.
“This civil rights action was brought in response to the violent acts of police abuse against Mr. Halevy and a violation of his civil rights,” Siegel told CNN. “Hopefully, this horrific action by NYPD officers will never happen to anyone again.”
The graphic video shows a bare-chested, bearded Halevy talking with two officers – one of them a woman – in what appears to be a game room containing a pool table and two couches.
The video shows the officers approaching Halevy, who is on one of the couches, and talking to him. Moments later, he stands and talks with the officers, gesticulating with his arms but making no apparent threat toward either officer. The video has no sound.
When the officers attempt to grab him by his arms, Halevy pulls free of their grasp.
The male officer crouches into a boxing stance and hits the victim more than a dozen times, striking him in the face, the back of his head and his torso. Halevy falls back into a couch, where he raises his arms in an apparent attempt to deflect the blows, but at no point does it appear that he is seeking to strike either officer.
Later in the video, the female officer can be seen striking Halevy repeatedly with a truncheon.
More than three minutes into the video, about 10 more officers enter the room, where they cuff Halevy’s wrists behind his back and lead him out.
According to a spokesman from the city law department, the “settlement was in the best interest of all parties.”
