Photo by ALEC TABAK/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. Kevin Dennis-Palmer speaks with The News about the alleged attack at his lawyer Jeffrey Rothman’s office.
A Brooklyn dad who says cops put him into a chokehold has settled his lawsuit against the city for $75,000, the Daily News has learned.
“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Kevin Dennis-Palmer said he gasped in the Feb. 9, 2013 incident — more than a year before Staten Island dad Eric Garner died with those same last words after being put in a chokehold.
“It makes you realize how truly blessed you are to get out of that situation,” Dennis-Palmer said of Garner,whose death last July touched off waves of demonstrations across the city.
The NYPD banned chokeholds in 1993.
Dennis-Palmer, 28, said Sgt. Burt Antoine and Officer Ryan Monteleone pulled up in their police cruiser, lights flashing, as he was attempting to parallel-park near his Brownsville home, after working his job as a first responder for National Grid.
Dennis-Palmer, a married father of two, said he hadn’t done anything wrong, and pulled out his cell phone to record the encounter.
“Why am I being stopped?” he said he asked one of the officers.
“You give me your license and registration and I’ll tell you why you’re being stopped,” was the response.
“I knew it was going to take a bad turn,” he said.
“My phone is slapped out of my hand. I’m Maced and then they’re trying to drag me out of the car and I’m telling them, ‘I’m stuck, I can’t get out of the car,’ ” he said.
Dennis-Palmer, who is 6-foot-3, said at least eight other officers arrived, and they tried to pull him out of the window.
ALEC TABAK/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Palmer settled his lawsuit with the city for $75,000.“I’m grabbed, basically by the back of my sweater, turned around and slammed down on the right side of my face. That’s when the melee ensues and everyone jumps on me,” he said.
He said he was lying facedown when one of the officers tried picking him up by his neck.
“I’m yelling, ‘I can’t breathe — you’re choking me! Just put the handcuffs on! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
He was taken to the 75th Precinct stationhouse and booked for resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, disorderly conduct and having windows that were too dark, a claim he denies. Police said his phone was lost during the struggle.
After he was sprung, he said he went to Methodist Hospital for treatment for a knot on his temple, a swollen eye, and cuts on his wrist and his head.
ALEC TABAK/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSKevin Dennis-Palmer said he was slammed to the ground, choked and left with injuries in a bad bust in 2013.The criminal charges were later dismissed, according to court papers.
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau investigated the incident, but the outcome of the probe is unclear.
His lawyer, Jeffrey Rothman, said the settlement is important, even though the city and the NYPD did not acknowledge wrongdoing in the case.
“No one suit is what forces change. It’s the accumulation of them that fosters public awareness … and the public’s demand for accountability,” Rothman said.
Earlier this month, the NYPD’s inspector general issued a stinging report commissioned in the wake of Garner’s death that found in 10 recent cases involving chokeholds, cops received little or no discipline from higherups.
Inspector General Philip Eure also questioned why, in four of the 10 cases, cops wound up using chokeholds as a “first act” against citizens who’d only confronted them verbally, not physically.