New York cop cleared of YouTube cyclist assault

15 comments
By Kirsten Frattini | Friday, Apr 30, 2010 2.00pm

A New York police officer who was caught on video shoving a Critical Mass protester off his bike has been found not guilty of assault.

Patrick Pogan, 24, who has since resigned from the force, was also cleared of harassment. However, he was convicted of charges related to making false statements about the incident.

Cyclist Christopher Long was initially charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest after the incident in Time Square on 25 July 2008. However, footage shot by a Florida tourist was posted on YouTube that cast doubt on Pogan's claims that the cyclist had steered into him.

After the clip was viewed by more than a million people, the charges against Long were dropped, the city ended up paying him $65,000 to settle a lawsuit and Pogan, who had graduated from police academy less than two weeks before the incident, was put on trial.

At New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Pogan claimed he ordered Long to stop due to traffic violations. He said he strode towards the cyclist and, believing the other man was about to hit him, acted in self defence. Shortly afterwards, while fellow officers scuffled with Long, Pogan ended up on the ground. He claimed to have confused the sequence of events in his initial report.

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Long faced a barrage of questions about his personal life in a bid to discredit him, and admitted being a habitual marijuana smoker and anti-government activist. The jury took two days to decide their verdicts.

District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jr. said in a statement that Pogan's conviction for lying "reinforces that no one – even a member of law enforcement – is above the law, and that inexperience is not an excuse to violate the law intentionally".

Long said he was pleased with the verdict because it would prevent Pogan from rejoining the force. He added: “I don’t think he ever really intended to assault me.” Pogan, the son of a retired NYPD detective, will be sentenced on 23 June. He faces up to four years in prison, although a custodial sentence isn't mandatory.

Time's Up representative Barbara Ross has known Long for five years and regularly takes part in Critical Mass rides in New York. She said: "This is not an isolated incident. The NYPD has been targeting Critical Mass cyclists since August 2004.

“Witnessing the NYPD’s behavior toward the cyclists for so many years, I feel that it’s a cultural bias within the NYPD, and lower ranking officers are given bad information from their superiors that these rides must be stopped at any cost.

"The only way it’s going to stop is if the mayor finally takes a stand and orders the NYPD Commissioner to stop targeting these cyclists and move in line with the remainder of the city’s stated goals of greener and more bike-friendly streets.”

Long v. Pogan is the second NYPD assault on cyclists to hit the headlines in recent weeks, both involving a YouTube video. Last month, New York City paid $97,751 to five cyclists who were wrongfully detained and arrested by the NYPD during a Critical Mass ride in March 2007.

The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Sergeant Timothy Horohoe for the excessive force he and the officers under his command used. Sgt Horohoe had pushed protester Richard Vazquez, 55, off his bike.

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User Comments

There are 15 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 15 of 15 comments

  • "This is not an isolated incident. The NYPD has been targeting Critical Mass cyclists since August 2004.

    ------------

    Imagine that. it's almsot as if it's their job to keep the traffic moving.

  • How that is not assault i'll never know

  • enoughgear - yep, let's ban cyclists from the roads altogether, in fact - let's ban cycling altogether, they're all nothing but trouble...

  • I'm sorry but that police officer clearly moved towards the cyclist, the cyclist then tries to avoid him and the police officer then rams him off the bike. How is that not assault?

  • The bottom line is that the police abuse their authority all the time. The officer just felt like taking aggression out on someone and he did. More and more people are cycling and the cities need to do more to make reasonable laws, roadways, bike paths and routes for cyclists.

  • "not guilty of assault"? WTF!?

  • enoughgear, how on earth you can make a statement like that if you have indeed watched that clip all the way through I will never know. Watch that clip in slow motion and you can see the police office pick out the cyclist before he is even on camera and you even see him pull his arms back and position himself to put all his weight behind the move well before the cyclist is close to him.

    Keeping traffic moving and assaulting someone are two different things. Taking your comments literally it would make it acceptable for a police officer when confronted with a stalled car causing traffic jams to punch the driver in the face, drag them violently from the car, throw them on the floor and shove the car down an embankment, dust their hands off and then arrest the individual.

  • I just saw the film clip today. A perfectly rational explaination of what happen is the officer ordered the bike to stop to issue a citation. The officer walked toward the cyclist to cite him. The cyclist decided to run and got decked. The presumption of innocence is the cornerstone of American justice. The prosecution must prove this is not what happened. Apparently they were not able to make the case to an unbiased jury.

  • Critical mass is a pretty childish thing to do, whats it accomplish?

    All it does is hold up everyone else's lives, pretty selfish I think.

    That being said, glad the cop was removed from the force.

  • thats apauling im a police officer and there was no excuse for his behaviour.

    hes lucky hes in america if that happened in this country he would be charged with assault.

    reading between the lines he was probably told to resign or be sacked.

  • If that was not a deliberate push/strike then I will avoid New York. I thought the US was hot on crime obviously this does not include law enforcement. God bless the Atlantic may it grow ever wider. Bet it barely got a mention on the right wing dominated media. If it had been a cyclist deliberately smashing into a cop coverage would of been typically partisan and medieval.

  • The acquittal does not mean that it wasn't assault, it simply means that the jury had some doubt about some element of the offence charged. It may be difficult to see that from the video, but they heard all the evidence.

    @enoughgear, bikes are traffic too, and we have as much right as anyone else to use the road. When a bunch of cars get on the road together they clog it far more effectively than any critical mass ride, and it's called a traffic jam. @ doolop, what critical mass accomplishes is to assert cyclists' right to use the road.

  • It'd be nice to say "only in America..." but the poilce abuse their powers equally as much here in the UK too. Very sad.

  • Wow. Just watched the video and that is appauling behaviour on the part of the policeman. I'm amazed to think behaviour like that could actually be defended in court; still, I suppose it takes all sorts to make a jury, eh?

  • Clearly the officer was in the wrong, but it makes me wonder what was going on.

    What were they trying to achieve, and if it was basically an illegal rolling roadblock in the middle of NYC, they should all have been locked up.

    Did the officer order him to stop, and he decided to run?

    Or did the officer just not like the look of that one guy (out of all those hundreds of other cyclists).

    This strikes me as very strange. There must have been more to this than one can make out from the video...

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