Motorist sues N.J. state troopers for roadside beatdown – New Jersey Monitor

New Jersey state troopers who stopped a motorist they suspected of street rage beat the unarmed man so badly he wanted surgical procedure to get better, based on allegations in a brand new federal civil rights lawsuit.

The Wayne resident accuses the New Jersey State Police and a number of named and unnamed troopers of extreme drive, illegal arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional misery.

David Vitale, 39, a longtime Spanish instructor at faculties in North Jersey, was driving residence on Route 80 in Could 2020 when troopers turned on their emergency lights and commenced following him, based on the grievance filed earlier this month. The troopers have been responding to a report of somebody in a white SUV firing a gun at one other motorist, based on the grievance.

When Vitale pulled over on the Rockaway Mall, troopers swarmed his white SUV, the place one punched out his passenger-side window and dove into the automotive to push him out of the driving force’s aspect, with none of the troopers telling him why they stopped him, the grievance says.

A beating ensued that left Vitale with a concussion, eye hemorrhage, and nasal fracture that required reconstructive surgical procedure, in addition to post-traumatic stress dysfunction and cognitive limitations, based on the lawsuit.

“There’s a whole lot of explaining they should do as to why they felt it essential to beat the hell out of a person like that,” Vitale’s lawyer, Robert B. Woodruff, advised the New Jersey Monitor.

Woodruff stated the officers eliminated their physique cams earlier than the encounter, which violates the Workplace of the Legal professional Normal’s body-worn digicam coverage.

However a minimum of one sprint cam captured the incident, Woodruff stated. That video caught troopers admitting Vitale’s license plate didn’t match what dispatchers reported, asking him if he was a part of Antifa, making homophobic remarks, and accusing him of being drunk or on medication and throwing a gun out of his window earlier than the automotive cease, Woodruff stated.

Troopers discovered no firearm in Vitale’s automotive or the roadside the place they stated he threw one, and Vitale had no medication or alcohol in his system, based on the lawsuit.

The sprint cam video additionally confirmed troopers choosing up their physique cams that had “fallen off” and reattaching them, Woodruff stated.

The absence of physique digicam footage needs to be simply as regarding to the troopers’ supervisors as it’s to Vitale, Woodruff stated. As a lot as physique cameras can shield residents from civil rights violations, in addition they can shield police from baseless accusations, he added.

“We wish to know what occurred to all of the physique cams,” he stated.

Because of the automotive cease, police charged Vitale, who had no prior felony document, with a number of offenses, and Vitale consequently misplaced his job as a tenured instructor at Dover Excessive Faculty, Woodruff stated.

Court docket information present Vitale was charged with 12 visitors offenses which might be nonetheless energetic in Rockaway Township Municipal Court docket. He additionally was charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault on a police officer, however these expenses seem to have been withdrawn, based on court docket information.

Vitale named 5 troopers — David Jenkins, William Duby, John Halpin, E. Clowes, and T. Partitions — as defendants in his lawsuit, in addition to unknown troopers and the company itself.

The Legal professional Normal’s Workplace’s use-of-force database doesn’t present any use-of-force experiences from the incident. Duby used drive throughout an unrelated automotive cease final September, the database exhibits.

The Workplace of the Legal professional Normal, which oversees the state police and handles lawsuits in opposition to the state and state companies, didn’t reply to a request for remark.