Long Island, NY — An innocent elderly man was yanked from his front porch, thrown down stairs, and then brutally attacked by those who claim to protect and serve. Then, after he was permanently injured, police charged him with a crime.
Robert Besedin, the 72-year-old Air Force veteran has since filed a federal lawsuit against police after he said two officers “pushed him, grab him by his neck, hurled him down four steps and body slammed him to the ground.”
The force with which the officers attacked Besedin was so brutal that it knocked his hearing aids from his ears.
After the officers savagely attacked the innocent elderly man, he was arrested, brought to jail, locked in a cage for days—unable to hear anything without his hearing aids—and charged with felony assault against two Nassau police officers. The only thing is, he never touched them.
The fact that Besedin was innocent was of no concern to the officers who charged him. In their sworn testimony and their written statement, the officers had accused Besedin of resisting arrest, stating that he “violently flailed his arms, kicked, screamed, and pushed Officer Mantovani down four steps” after a confrontation on Besedin’s front porch.
Luckily for Besedin, however, he had a surveillance camera on his front porch which captured the incident on video and proved the cops were lying thugs.
While in jail, Besedin told police that there was video of the incident but they never cared to look at it. The charges were held over this innocent man’s head for a year because the cops lied and the “investigators” couldn’t have cared less about video evidence exonerating Besedin. It was not until this week that all charges were dropped against Besedin, in spite of the original attack happening a year ago.
“These officers lied,” Frederick Brewington, Besedin’s lawyer said. “And there’s no question they lied.”
Officers Stephen Beckwith and John Mantovani haven’t faced any discipline for their role in beating an innocent elderly man and lying about it in their report either.
According to Brewington, police responded to Besedin’s home that night because his phone “butt dialed” 911 several times.
“There’s a question of how all those calls were made,” Brewington said. “We believe that a good number of them were made accidentally, kind of what we refer to as ‘butt calls.'”
Regardless of what brought police to Besedin’s home that night, attacking an innocent, non-violent man and then lying about it to falsely charge him was a criminal act and the officers need to be held accountable.
Sadly, however, if history is any indicator, only the taxpayers of Long Island will pay for the crimes of Nassau’s finest.
Video footage surfacing days, weeks, or months after a violent incident involving police often disputes their original versions and prove that cops have no problem lying to justify their brutality.
One such incident involved an officer’s dashcam. In 2013, Officer Adam Lin spotted 19-year-old Dontrell Stephens in a “high-crime area” — the man’s own low-income neighborhood — riding a bicycle in a manner the deputy found suspicious.
Lin stopped the youth, who dismounted the bike with a cell phone in his hand and slowly approached the officer. Just outside the range of dash cam video, the officer shot Stephens four times — claiming he was in fear for his life — but footage and evidence clearly showed the claim to be baseless.
Three of the bullets remain lodged in Stephens’ body, according to the Sun Sentinel — two in his arm and one in his spine, which left him paralyzed and dependent on a wheelchair for mobility.
Stephens won a massive $22.4 million settlement. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer, last year, however, set a precedent, and instead of the taxpayers being held solely liable, nearly everything this officer owned was seized to pay back Stephens — including everything from his furniture to his clothing.
#1: Vicomte13 To: Deckard (#0)
That's the right precedent. People must be personally accountable for what they do at work. The police carry guns and shoot people, and people cannot lawfully resist them. Therefore, the police need to be held personally accountable for what they do wrong.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-02-09 08:43:50 Reply Private Reply
#2: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Even honest mistakes? I'm not saying intentional wrong doing.
Because if they are held accountable for honest mistakes then no one I'd going to want to be an officer?
Intentional wrong doing or gross negligence yes.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-09 08:51:06 Reply Private Reply
#3: Deckard To: A K A Stone (#2)
Yeah - even "honest mistakes". Police officers should know the laws they are enforcing, and when they pull a SWAT raid at oh-dark-thirty and kill the homeowner due to the false information fed to them by a "confidential" informant or going to the wrong house by mistake - they need to be severely punished.
Cops who deliberately lie, beat an old man and claim he attacked them, refuse to even look at the video evidence that would show the truth - yeah, they should be fired and not allowed to move down the road and become cops anywhere ever again.
In their sworn testimony and their written statement, the officers had accused Besedin of resisting arrest, stating that he “violently flailed his arms, kicked, screamed, and pushed Officer Mantovani down four steps” after a confrontation on Besedin’s front porch.
Luckily for Besedin, however, he had a surveillance camera on his front porch which captured the incident on video and proved the cops were lying thugs.
While in jail, Besedin told police that there was video of the incident but they never cared to look at it. The charges were held over this innocent man’s head for a year because the cops lied and the “investigators” couldn’t have cared less about video evidence exonerating Besedin. It was not until this week that all charges were dropped against Besedin, in spite of the original attack happening a year ago.
Deckard posted on 2018-02-09 09:17:32 Reply Private Reply
#4: A K A Stone To: Deckard (#3)
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-09 09:18:41 Reply Private Reply
#5: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#2)
They should be held to the same, and a slightly higher, standard than average civilians who commit honest mistakes.
If we punish average civilians for honest mistakes, then the cops should be punished for those mistakes also, a bit more harshly than civilians because they have been trained, and are expected to exercise greater restraint.
Right now we have become so authoritarian in our society that we essentially crucify civilians for honest mistakes, using the rubric "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." If that is the standard, then cops should be held to a higher, more exacting standard.
Now, if we're willing to lower the standard for regular people, and be less militaristic and brutal to them, let them off the hook, then I have no problem being similarly lenient with the police. I simply believe in a common set of rules for everybody, and we clearly do not have that in our society today.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-02-09 10:42:40 Reply Private Reply
#6: Stoner To: Vicomte13 (#1)
EXACTLY !!!
If they never have to pay for their screw ups, they will continue with their screw ups. Kinda like they were the Waffen SS.
And some people wonder why so many no longer respect the police. Duh !
Stoner posted on 2018-02-09 13:07:37 Reply Private Reply
#7: Stoner To: A K A Stone (#2)
Stone, this situation would seem to fall under those categories.
Stoner posted on 2018-02-09 13:10:54 Reply Private Reply
#8: Vicomte13 To: Stoner (#6)
Of course, the difference is that the Waffen SS DID eventually have to pay for their actions - through execution and prison. The SS were eventually judged for their crimes and did not escape, but that was only because foreign powers - the Americans, the British, the Soviets, the French, the Canadians, and various other colonial and local troops - conquered Germany, captured the Waffen SS, and tried them.
Nobody is going to invade the US and bring the rogue agents to justice. The only way that will happen is if the American people, through the democratic process, elect politicians who will punish the police, and then the elected politicians actually do what they were elected to do. Nothing else will end the scourge.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-02-11 12:03:08 Reply Private Reply
#9: A K A Stone To: Vicomte13 (#8)
We're Nazi Catholic collaborators. They had concentration camps in France.
A K A Stone posted on 2018-02-11 12:09:26 Reply Private Reply
#10: Vicomte13 To: A K A Stone (#9)
Some were, others weren't . France was divided. The Nazis built concentration camps everywhere they occupied, including France. There is a row between Israel and Poland now over the German extermination camps in Poland. The Poles didn't put them there. The Germans did.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-02-11 15:33:36 Reply Private Reply