After one day of deliberations, a Manhattan jury decided that an NYPD officer did nothing wrong when he beat an Iraq war vet with his baton 20 times as the man lay writhing on the floor of the lobby of a West 93rd Street housing project. Also okay: hitting the guy while he was handcuffed, as seen in surveillance video documenting the 2008 incident. The jury also decided that Officer David London did not file any false records after arresting Army veteran Walter Harvin, who suffers from P.T.S.D. and whose whereabouts were unknown. But Harvin's family was there, and reacted to the verdict with outrage.
"I would like to take the same club he whupped my son with and whup" Officer London with it, said Harvin's mother Cora Page outside the courthouse. "Sgt. Harvin served his country, and that is the justice he got?" Prosecutors maintained that London used excessive force and then tried to cover it up by signing a police report falsely claiming Harvin had punched him. In his defense, London claimed he didn't read the papers carefully and testified that he had to keep pummeling Harvin with his baton because Harvin was threatening to kill him.
Officer London broke down in tears when the verdict was read, and, clutching a Bible, told the press, "I’d like to thank God and my family." And his lawyer declared, "We’re happy people are realizing police work doesn’t always look pretty, but that is the nature of the job." And hey, at least Harvin didn't get publicly sodomized with that baton—oh, right, a jury decided that never happened, either.
