A pair of Bronx men are suing the city after a cop smashed a street memorial for their dead friend in a caught-on-video act of cruelty.

Jonathan Rodriguez and Willy Lopez said they were paying tribute to their dearly departed pal when NYPD Capt. Emilio Melendez and other police officers ordered them to leave the area, according to a Bronx Supreme Court lawsuit.

Rodriguez and Lopez were marking the four-year anniversary of the death of a friend killed in a motorcycle accident in the Dominican Republic when Melendez and other officers approached, said their lawyer Richard Barton.

The men were on Morris Avenue between 175th and 176th streets next to the memorial of candles, cards, letters, a flag and a teddy bear when Melendez began calling them criminals and started “kicking and crushing the candles, smashing and stomping the cards and other items and sweeping all the items in the memorial with his foot toward the street,” according to court papers and the video, which was posted to YouTube.

Captain Emilio Melendez kicked over a memorial for a deceased man from the Bronx.COPWATCH PATROL UNIT

“I will not have a fire on my block,” Melendez said, according to the footage.

The incident coincided with the annual Dominican Day Parade, which perhaps had the officers on edge, said Barton, who insisted that local cops are familiar with the tradition of sidewalk and street memorials.

“They well know the practice here,” he said. “I think it’s in everybody’s interest, the community’s interest, that we respect it.”

Lopez said he was falsely arrested for disorderly conduct as he left the area, and both men are suing the city, the NYPD and Melendez for unspecified damages, claiming “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

The NYPD said it would review the lawsuit when it received it.